This week, I started a twitter feed for my class. All I can think of is "Why didn't I do this sooner?" Seventh Graders were reading an excerpt from Into Thin Air by Jon Krakuer. They were fascinated by Krakauer's account of Mount Everest. They started asking questions about what I knew about Mount Everest. I didn't know much.
Then, I remembered Flat Stanley. A few years ago, Belden had taken Allie O's Flat Stanley with him to the Taj Mahal and ta daaaaa Mount Everest. I had thought about shooting him an e-mail or texting him but at the spur of the moment, I decided to tweet him.
The kids had a bunch of questions for him. When he didn't answer the questions right away, I explained that he was at work. He would probably tweet on his lunch break. Which he did, and I pointed out the next day.
And at that moment, I realized my class needed its own twitter account. We would ask the questions we needed, and we would shout out to the world our morsels of wisdom. I would put up homework reminders and use "Tweets of the Day" as journal prompts.
And I just wonder, "Why didn't I do this sooner?"
1 comment:
Speaking of Everest, in Thomas Friedman's latest book, That Used to be Us, he notes that Everest now has 3G coverage for those climbers who wish to use their cell phones to take pictures and document their feat.
Run that one by your district's technology coordinator and see what he thinks! Some schools still don't let kids have access to Youtube and cell phones. Yet, they can climb Everest and get reception!
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