To Tweet Or Not To Tweet...A Guide To Tweeting With Early Learners

By Liane Loeppky and Michelle Hiebert

Social media is quickly becoming the new mode of communication in society. Research shows that 25% of people worldwide will use social media in 2013 (eMarketer.com, June 18, 2013). Personally, Twitter is the way in which we connect with other educators throughout the world and we have found it to be extremely useful. A world of knowledge is literally at your fingertips. We have found that Twitter is an effective tool to use in our classrooms to facilitate learning in many curricular areas such as: Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Math. For example, one of the first comparisons when making Twitter connections is to ask our friends about the weather where they live. Learning that our friends in Texas wear coats when it is 70F made the students giggle because in Abbotsford we would be wearing shorts and t-shirts. Even connecting classes across the same town educates our students about a variety of cultural and school differences. Unfortunately, with social media use on the rise, there is a lack of basic etiquette and user knowledge. Adults of today did not have anyone teaching them proper social media usage when they were in school, and are therefore not aware of what their children are posting on social media. It is our hope that we will be able to teach our students what is appropriate social media interaction, how to stay safe online and how to create a positive digital footprint.

Why Do We Use and Teach Social Media?

The user agreement states that in order to have a Twitter account, the person must be over the age of 13. In the case of a class Twitter account, the teacher is the owner and controls the content and usage of the account. Children are not ever tweeting on their own, nor do they have access to the account without the supervision of the teacher. Twitter has the option to lock your account so that your tweets are unsearchable and anyone who wishes to follow you must gain your permission to do so. Certainly locking the account limits who can see your tweets, but it can also limit with whom you can learn and share ideas.

Is Using Twitter Safe With Students?

Unlocked Account

I (Michelle) choose to keep my class twitter account unlocked so that parents in my class who are not on twitter can still see our twitter feed in a widget on our class website. Locked accounts cannot use this feature, and I thought it was important for parents to have access to our tweets, whether they were personally on twitter or not. Perhaps by seeing our class tweets the parents know a little more about what is happening in our class?

I (Liane) choose to have a locked classroom Twitter account because I am concerned about the privacy of my students. I work in a school where the majority of our parents are not on Twitter and do not even have an email address. I like to know who is reading our class tweets and looking at our pictures. I do not post names of students, but still want to respect the wishes of parents who are not familiar with this Social Media platform.

Locked Account

The PEW Research Center in the United States has conducted surveys in 2008, 2010 and 2012 on the usage of Social Media by teenagers. It has shown a steady increase of usage on sites such as Twitter from 8% of all teens online in 2009, to 24% in 2013. In addition, when the teens were surveyed 81% use sites like Facebook. The researchers at PEW surveyed the teens about the type of information they put on Social Media site, like Facebook and Twitter. The numbers show that education about privacy and information is important. 92% of teens post their real name 91% of teens post photos of themselves 84% of teens post their personal interests 82% of teens post their birthdates 71% of teens post their school name and the city they live in 53% of teens post their email address 20% of teens post their cell phone numbers (Madden et al., 2013) Teens, Social Media and Privacy. Retrieved Oct. 18, 2013, from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Teens-Social-Media-And-Privacy/Main-Report/Part-1.aspx

Who Is Using Social Media?

First, it is best to have a twitter account of your own and connect with other teachers using twitter with their classes. How can you teach something that you have not put into practice yourself? Once you have your own twitter account, check out the wonderful things happening in #kinderchat. #kinderchat is a great online twitter community of teachers, administrators and parents of young children. Each Monday we have twitter chats at 12:30 PST (for our European and African colleagues) and 6pm PST (for those of us in North America) to discuss various aspects of the education of young children. Founded by Amy Murray and Heidi Echternacht, #kinderchat is a vibrant, growing online community.

How Do I Get Started?

Step #1

made especially for Kinderchat by Tony Squindo

Once you are comfortable with using twitter as a grown-up, you are ready to start a separate, kid-friendly, student-only class account. Please do not combine your adult twitter account with your student account. Rule #1 of a class account should be: FOLLOW OTHER CLASSES ONLY!

Step #2

Of course, if your principal or other trusted adult tweets something to your class, by all means respond and bring those tweets into your learning. You do not, however, need or want grown-up tweets in your class timeline.

Find other classes to follow. Many of the #kinderchat PLN have class twitter accounts, so contact a few and start connecting. A few quality relationships are much easier for little ones to relate to than many superficial contacts. A good number of class connections for five-year-olds is five. Get to know a few classes really well. Many more than that and your students will become confused and not know where the tweets are coming from. N.B. One way of making your class twitter experience more meaningful is to join the Kindergarten Around the World project developed by Amy Murray, one of the founders of #kinderchat.

Step #3

Tweet out important events in your day. This will give your class followers something to comment on. It is important to keep in mind the Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection laws of British Columbia when tweeting. Inform parents and gain their permission before tweeting anything. In any public forum, whether blogging, tweeting or presenting class information in the newspaper is to keep student names and photos separate. It is good practice to use the first initial only of a student name in a tweet, and it is ok to post photos without any names attached. There are apps available to pixelate faces if necessary.

Step #4

Ask questions of your followers. The best way to make a connection is to have a conversation and it is no different in twitter or in real life. Common topics of discussion are favourite toys, favourite food, cultural differences, weather and local geography.

Step #5

Make a map of all of your followers. This helps give your students visual clues about where your friends live. This can lead to discussions about travel time, time zones and “why can’t we play with our twitter friends in real life?”

Step #6

Contact your followers through other high tech and old school low tech methods. Twitter is a great way to connect a la minute (barring time zone synchronicity issues), but certainly other forms of connecting and the tried and true pen pal model of years past are also still relevant. It is so exciting for students to get anything in the mail, so connecting via letters, pictures and cards makes your online (often far away) friends even more real, as is using Skype or FaceTime.

Step #7 (but really could fall anywhere on the continuum of relationship building)

This book was created by teachers for teachers as a part of our University of Victoria EDCI 338 coursework under the direction of Dr. Valerie Irvine. We hope you find this helpful in your journey to connect your class on a global scale. Liane Loeppky @namesescapeme scatteredmindmusings.wordpress.com Michelle Hiebert @MauiMickey mauimickey.wordpress.com