Friday, August 10, 2012

#MyFavFriday : Tweet me!

I don't know about you all, but twitter's really caught on in my school with the high school crowd. A few years ago when I told the kids that I had a class twitter account they laughed at me and said twitter was "for old people". I tried not to take offense. :)  In the past year or so, though, they've become tweetaholics.

I enjoy twitter, but I loooove trig. The perfect world is combining the two! So when we finished it up this year I gave them the assignment to tweet me. They had to include #trigis ("trig is") and then give their description/definition of trig. And, of course, they had to keep it <= 140 characters.  (Props went to the people who were the closest - I made them count!)

It turned out to be a lot of fun. The kids were amazed at how much they had to think to get their description in 140 characters instead of some long rambling description. And oh, the hash tags that they included.  I put all of their entries together on some slides so they could check out each other's work.

Without further ado, here's #myFavFriday for this week.


The only thing I might do differently for next year is give them a pre-made template to work from with 140 little boxes. I think it would help us all out.

I was hoping that a bunch of the kids would actually tweet their replies, but only a few did. Guess they didn't want to show their friends how nerdy they are :)

10 comments:

Nutter Buttersmith said...

Awesome idea! Incorporating writing and technology! Maybe next time, you could offer a few extra credit points to encourage more to actually tweet their descriptions on twitter. That is, if you believe in extra credit. ;-)

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) said...

I LOVE this idea!

Carol L. said...

That is a great idea! Do you have a separate twitter account that you use with your students?

druin said...

My students are just like yours - this past year they discovered the power of twitter and I've been trying to figure out how to capitalize on it. Thanks for this idea!

Simplifying Radicals said...

I love that you "publish" their work. Do you find that your students but that little extra effort in because of this?

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) said...

Okay. I'm super excited now. I just figured out how to use this idea on the first day of school as an exit ticket!

rachel said...

I love this idea!

Unknown said...

Lol! I like the occasionally confusing, always interesting tweet. Cool idea!

Kathryn Laster said...

Fabulous idea!!! I have been debating about a teacher twitter account, so I think questions like this would be perfect to get some responses.

KFouss said...

@nutter - maybe some extra credit would be worth it in this case. :) just as an incentive, of course. And only if we could get it trending in the area.

@Mrs. L - I use @foussmath with the kids. I tweet out daily assignments and random things that I think of. The kids also know its an easy/quick way to get ahold of me when they're not in class. It's interesting to see their tweets to me when I have a sub in class!

@simplifying Radicals - I've used wikis in class before. We kept an eye n how many visits we'd get; the kids are amazed that there are actually people out there who read their stuff!

@Sarah - love your idea! I was thinking of doing a "New Year's Resolution" one. Maybe just tag it with #NYR?

And thanks to the rest of you for the comments! :)