A Use for Twitter

One of our high school teachers is launching the use of twitter with his classes. He has set up a twitter account and sent a letter to parents and students asking them to join twitter and follow his updates. He went on to suggest to them that the students with iphones could utilize twitterific to get his updates on their iphone.

It will be interesting to see how this progresses. Right now he has about 16 kids who are already following him on twitter. Honestly, this is not an application of twitter that even crossed my mind. With so many kids at our school with iphones at this point, though, it just makes sense.

This particular teacher teaches Spanish classes. This started me wondering about other uses of twitter for his classes. What about having conversations totally in Spanish or even mostly in Spanish? What about connecting with people in Spanish speaking countries via twitter? Could this be the tip of the iceberg?

@WilsonGAC could be paving the way for future meaningful uses of this microblogging tool.

Reflecting on 2008

What I love about being a networked teacher is the resources "out there" on the Internet that I wouldn't come across any other way. For instance, this morning one of the people in my Twitter network, Kevin, put out a tweet inviting people to participate in his Year in a Sentence project. The idea behind it is that you put into one sentence the "essence" or "theme" of your 2008. For this English teacher, that is a challenge. I mean being succinct enough to put it in one sentence and still get across the profoundness of what you've experienced seems a little daunting. On the other hand, it is a little like asking kids to come up with one sentence describing the theme of a literary work. So, after many revisions, here goes: From different dimensions and aspects of life, health, educational networks, leadership, and service, this year, for me, has been about moving from the sidelines to participating in the “game” of life.