Bringing Twitter in the Classroom

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I found this article very interesting. I've noticed that a lot more high school students are using Twitter these days and they prefer it over Facebook. My friend's sister was saying to me, "Facebook is for old people, Twitter is what it's all about." Little does she know Twitter has been out for a while :)
This article discusses how to implement the usage of twitter into the classroom. It's great way for posting reminders and quick updates and a good platform for students to ask questions and track hashtags. When I was in high school, my teacher did a similar project to #3 on this list: Personifying Characters on Twitter. We were learning about the Holocaust and we were each assigned a role and Twitter was meant to be our diary entries as us writing in that time period. It really helped to get into the mindset of the topic.

Student Feedback

Students are in the classroom, so should they not be given the opportunity to speak out and have opinions? Joshua Block, a Humanities teacher at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, thinks so. He wrote an article, Learning From Students, for Edutopia discussing just that.

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Student feedback can heath teacher assess if certain methods, and teaching styles are working well for the students. Also, maybe the the students' are completely bored-teachers could try to do something about that. In college, we fill out evaluations for professors that may help them for the following semester. This article provides several options that teachers could do in an elementary school level. One way that I really like is by giving students a choice. Giving them a choice between how to do an assignment opens up a platform for communication and can be very beneficial in the classroom.

A New Way to Monitor Class Behavior

I went to a wedding a couple weeks ago and I interacting with a 3rd grade teacher and she was telling me about her classroom and she mentioned this new fun way to track student behavior. It is called ClassDojo. Basically it is a classroom management tool that helps teachers track student behavior with efficiency.
It comes with built in avatars for different classes and teachers are able to add the names of their students. Teachers are then able to award points (positive or negative) called 'dojo.' Two different sounds are associated with the type of points, so the teacher can have this open on a smart board where students are able to see their points. In the article, the teacher mentioned that she installed the app on her phone so she can record points right away (if students are at lunch are walking in the hallways). Another positive side was that teachers are able to send reports to the parents without much hassle.
I think this is a great idea in a classroom. It encourages students to improve their behavior and the idea of points gets them excited. With the ease of technology, teachers can update on the go. I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this!