Twitter

I created a classroom Twitter account as a way for parents to access their children's work anywhere and at anytime. The twitter account also provides links to the class blog where parents are encouraged to leave comments. Using twitter has helped drive more traffic to the class blog. The reading below is evidence of 'systematically and critically engaging with evidence and professional literature to reflect on and refine my practice'.

"What teachers must do for parents is instigate student learning logs (in any format) and raise the incentives for parents to be involved in them. Documenting learning allows parents and teachers to recognise it and this raises learning’s status in the mind of the child. Parents need to be made aware that becoming participants in this recognition they will raise the achievement of their own children with only small but regular gestures and comments.   

The big benefit of digital is that many people in the life of a child can provide these small gestures of recognition from their phone anywhere and at anytime. Schools need to harness the power of having a child’s learning widely affirmed by their own community, including peers, and move beyond the reliance on just their teacher as learning provider".

Author: Richard Wells http://ipad4schools.org/

Below is the letter sent home to parents.