Twitter: A Window into Classrooms?

I've had a Twitter account for 24 hours now, so I can by no means be considered an expert; but I spent my evening wondering about using it as a connection, a window into classrooms.

Blogging certainly allows us into each others classrooms and heads. We get to learn from others, hear about projects, concerns, and what other teachers are doing. But it is not really a clear window into how time is spent in the classroom. We hear very little from people about their schedules, and about how they actually spend their time with kids. Twitter could change that.

Depending on who the inteneded audience is (professionals or parents) using a combination of Twitter and Flickr, you could be completely open and transparent about what is happening in your classroom. You could post a stream of ..... (what the heck are they called... Twits?) your thoughts that could show in 15, 20, or 30 minute blocks what is actually happening in your classroom. Other professionals could read this stream and over time, build up a great picture of what is happening in your classroom, how you actually spend your time in your class.

As teachers we are used to having our kids, closing our doors, and spending our day with them. This is the complete opposite; this is the radical transparency that Chris Anderson has been thinking about with Wired magazine as well. Wiki everything. Let people in. Open the doors.

technorati tags:twitter, wired, chris, anderson, classrooms

Comments

[Barbara]

I get the idea but it is pushing the envelope. I can see using it for the thin walled classroom. I would like it even to keep a pulse on things in general..like ah they are starting their science experiments let me go take a look....BUT the question for most will be why...how can it help the students or me in teaching/learning. Transparency does not come easily for most educators. I think I am going to sign up just to try it and also because it will be interesting to see what I am doing with my time.

[Dean Shareski]

I like Barbara's challenge about how this will help students learn. Having said that, I can tell you from using Twitter fairly regularly for about a month, I've been able to glean resources more than anything else. The window into folks world is a bit unstructured at the moment so it's difficult to really develop a clear image.

What I'd love from you is a day in the life video. Send me a plane ticket and I'll come up and film it! ;)

[Clarence Fisher]

Plane ticket.....? Sheeeshh.. Southerners..... Its only about a 10 hour drive from Moose Jaw to Snow Lake. The unstructured stream of conscious in Twitter is self evident and I'm not sure if this is a tool for learning for students. But I can see it being a tool for teachers. If someone posted every 15 - 20 minutes, the rest of us could follow their stream and actually get a sense of what their daily classroom lives are like.

[J.D. Williams]

I had tried commenting earlier but I'm not sure if I put it down right. I may have hit preview then just closed the window without checking it. (Or it just hasn't been moderated yet and I'm just thinking I messed it up ;) )

I haven't tried Twitter yet, but I don't think it would be beneficial to use in my classroom. A lot of the "audience" that would be the most interested in it doesn't really have access.

I do this instead: http://mrwilliams.edublogs.org/desktop
I have a program that takes a screen capture of my interactive white board every 3 minutes and ftp's it to the web. I then link to the image on my classroom blog. So if I have the program running and we're using the SmartBoard, the image changes every 3 minutes. It really doesn't get any views either, but it is less work for me than typing even a short line out every 15 - 20 minutes.

[Tim Lauer]

I like J.D.'s idea. He could use Jaiku and embed the RSS feed for the image grabs and create a presence stream for his desktop grabs... Another idea would be some kind of automated script to Flickr to create an archive. I think automated methods that capture the essence of the school day would be interesting to play with.