Podcast Here!
Surprises
As the planning for this was altered drastically from my initial plan to Tweet our field trip to Taiwan I've had to rush out an email to the parents of one class last week (it didn't help I was away at a conference for five days!). The plan is to trial run with it in one class to see what the experience is for students. I sent out the following email to the parents:
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Dear 5Z Parents,
In an effort to integrate more 21st Century aspects into our classrooms we are going to trial using Twitter to allow students to share and reflect more effectively with family, classmates and the world beyond.
What is Twitter? Well, take a look at the following Common-Craft video (as you may know our students have been making these recently, but this is from the official site!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
Ok, so now you know what Twitter is, how can you start following our class Twitter account. Follow this simple video to create your own account: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO2o7pCaw4o
When you have created your Twitter account go to this address http://twitter.com/#!/g5isf and then click the Green Follow button, then you will be able to follow all of our Tweets from G5Z.
Any questions, please drop me a line at cgallagher@isf.edu.hk.
Best Regards,
Colin Gallagher
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The surprises are and were that the number of replies have been sparse to say the least which leads me to.....
Unexpected bumps in the road (What you would revise)
Parents were not very responsive, only two responded to me. One to ask a question about the sign-up and one that was concerned about safety. I was actually expecting more queries about safety but as we had guidelines about safety in respect to our Grade 5 student blogs and would follow the same guidelines I guess it wasn't too much of an issue. At the minute we only have two parents following us so far. As the parents of our Grade 5 students have not been the most active responding to our students' blogs I guess this shouldn't be too much of a shock With moving to a new school next year I think any initiatives like this should be laid out at the start of the year, if a school's environment is not conducive or responsive to these types of initiatives (or not prepared) then the uptake will be poor.
Delights (What went well)
The students were enthusiastic at first. Initial impressions from the classroom teacher were that the students were thinking more on things they can reflect on and Tweet about. They could tell the difference between the more planned blogging to the more immediate and spur-of-the-moment Tweeting.
However, after a couple of days there hasn't been much tweeting. I will be looking into this and the reasons why in my final presentation.
However, after a couple of days there hasn't been much tweeting. I will be looking into this and the reasons why in my final presentation.
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