Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Kate Messner: Twitter in the Classroom

I'm not a teacher, so why is it that creative teachers make me soooo happy? And why do articles like Kate Messner's piece in School Library Journal about using Twitter in the classroom make me want to borrow a few eager students for the day just to try out her list of ideas?

I think it's partly because she's so darn organized about it---offering a sample proposal to bring to the administration for approval, a list of Twitter resources, and several concrete examples of how her students benefitted from their use of a new technology. She makes me feel---despite the fact that I have no teaching experience, that I don't know the first thing about school policies, that I don't even have any students, for pity's sake! --- that I could do it too. Which, I guess, is the secret weapon of all great teachers. They inspire us to imagine what we could be.

Disclaimer:  Kate opens the article with a story about her class participating in my Twitter chat with editor Cheryl Klein about the creation of OPERATION YES.  I'm thrilled about that, but even without my book being mentioned, it would be a fantastic article. Go read!

5 comments:

  1. The answer to the first question is because you have a delightfully inquisitive mind.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. That was a great article and what a creative idea!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow. That article actually made me weepy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love reading about teachers like that.

    Also, I duly noted your reference to your spiral bound notebook. Ever since my co-children's librarian got an iPod Touch, which he's using to organize his life, I've taken to referring to my notebook as my iSpiralboundnotebook. He tells me to shut up.

    In the interest of full disclosure, I did recently get an iPod Touch myself, but I am not using it to organize my life. I am using it to play Tetris and Scramble, and to add movies to my Netflix queue.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What's the deal with Kate Messner? Is there more than one of her??? Sheesh, some people really make it happen!

    ReplyDelete

R-E-S-P-E-C-T (or you will be deleted)

You can receive followup comments to this conversation by checking the "notify me" box below the comment window.