Creating a Community Outside the Classroom

As a part of the publicity project the students will take on, they will each compose reaction tweets after each reading, as if they were live-tweeting their reading. While the students could write such a thing in their journal, their journals would only be read by their teacher and maybe by peers. Sending their reactions into the Twitterverse allows for interaction between them and people outside the classroom. In addition to increased engagement, this activity may increase a student's care in what they write. If it's going to be visible to anyone on the internet, they may be more thoughtful in their responses. While the limitation of 140 characters can be difficult for some students, it can also be viewed as an exercise in expressing one's self in a concise and accurate way.

This assignment is an example of the tenth teaching standard: collaboration. It applies specifically to 10(g), that the teacher "Uses technological tools and a variety of communication strategies to build local and global learning communities that engage learners, families, and colleagues." In this case, Twitter serves as the technological tool that will help to engage learners and their families. This account would have to be well-shared in order to create a true audience for the students, and, in an ideal situation, it would expand outside of the local learning community.