The second artifact I chose to share for the purpose of this reflection is the Twitter Moment I created for the “Share Your Story” assignment. I will be honest, this assignment was tough for me. I had a hard time balancing the parameters of the assignment and what I could actually take away and use in my classroom. Teaching in a high school, I find it hard to figure out how much communication from me to parents is necessary, versus teaching students how to communicate with their families and involve them in their education. I chose to include the artifact because I felt like I finally found a tool that would allow me to include parents in our classroom activities, without giving them too much information, and giving them some talking starters to help communicate with their students. In her article “Effective Communication via a Classroom Newsletter,” Janelle Cox states “maintaining effective communication between parents and teachers is the key to student success.” I found using Twitter moments allows me to succinctly sum up what is going on in class to help foster this communication.
In essence, Twitter Moments allows you to link a series of Tweets so that one URL can be shared out. This allows parents to follow your series of Tweets, without needing to follow you on Twitter. You can create a different Moment for each class, which would allow parents to only see what’s happening in their student’s class, rather than every section you teach. This seemed like a great way to communicate with parents in that Twitter is accessible everywhere, many parents are on or know how to use Twitter, and it gives brief updates for busy families.
You can find the Twitter Moment I started creating for my Lit Workshop class here, or at the bottom of this entry.
Some challenges in creating a Twitter Moment include figuring out how to sum up classroom activities so that it is meaningful for parents. Tweets need to be concise due to character limits, but need to be detailed enough to allow for family involvement. The Tweets also need to act as a springboard for conversations for students to have with their families. Another challenge to using Twitter moments is that you need to get families involved. Since it is not something you can send home in a student’s folder, encouraging parents to use the resource can be a challenge, especially for families who do not have access to technology. A third challenge to using Twitter moments is that the use of the resource needs to be done continuously, as to not lose interest by families. At the same time, a teacher needs to be cautious about oversharing, which would also make the tool ineffective for students and their parents. Lastly, many districts have policies regarding Twitter, and it may be a challenge to figure out how to use Twitter Moments and stay in compliance with district rules.
While I had originally looked at this tool as being something I could create to share with parents as a form of keeping them involved, I think there are other possibilities as well. For instance, students themselves could Tweet and add their own input into a classroom Twitter Moment. Students can also use Twitter Moments for class assignments and group work as another form of assessment. Lastly, Twitter Moments can be used by the school as a whole, which would allow teachers, club sponsors, and coaches to all post to one place that families could access as needed. I am sure there are other possibilities for this tool in school as well, but I am excited to starting using this as a means of communication with my families!
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