In my class, I’ve introduced my students to the whole world
via Twitter. We started by sending out random tweets about what topic we were
exploring that day. One eerily calm day in January, 2011, we tracked a snow
storm that was heading our way and found ourselves and our tweets mentioned the next
morning on CBC Newsworld ,
as they followed our snow storm tracking tweets. We like to think we put Iona
on the map.
This year, as last, we tweeted out thoughts with students
and teacher across the globe as part of the Global Read Aloud Project.
We also had fun on February 29th tweeting with twins as part of our “Math
Word Problem of the Day” to figure out their ages because they were born in a
leap year. However, the most rewarding experience thus far, is our tweeting as
we explored the Holocaust.
Each year, to explore the Holocaust I choose a book to read
aloud to the class. We read it. We discuss it. We share some tears. We beg for another chapter. This year our book
was ‘Hana’s Suitcase’ by Karen Levine. As we started the book, we sent out a
simple tweet: “We are about to start our read aloud of the book ‘Hana’s
Suitcase’ #HanasSuitcase” From there, the excitement built. Page after much
anticipated page we learned of Hana and George Brady, two young siblings during
the time of the Holocaust. We also learned about a young lady from Japan,
Fumiko, who started a Holocaust museum to teach the children of Japan about the
Holocaust and about a little girl’s suitcase – Hana’s Suitcase. The story was
so interesting.
You can only imagine the excitement
when we received a tweeted reply:
The squeals and questions of
disbelief rang through the classroom – Fumiko, whom we were reading about in
the book was tweeting with us! All the way from Japan, Fumiko was chatting /
tweeting with us! The conversation continued as we leafed through the pages. We
asked Fumiko questions; we shared our thoughts. In one tweet we shared journal
entries that we featured on the class blog.
Then, an hour later, we received a tweet from @LaraHanaBrady. We couldn’t
believe our eyes. Who was this tweeter, this online entity with the same name
as the little girl in our book? Her niece. George Brady’s daughter.
All of a sudden, learning about
such a difficult time in history, something so distant, became real. My little class in Iona had a
personal connection to the story we were reading. Suddenly they weren’t just
words on a page or a story read by the teacher – they were the real words,
thoughts and emotions felt by George, Lara, Fumiko and Hana. As we finish our
follow up activities with this book, we are sharing them with Lara, George,
Fumiko and the world. It’s now become a
story of the past and the present. A story of here and there. And in many ways,
not a story of “them”, but a story of us.
@ruralteacher @inmyclassroom What does that mean?
It means that I’m a teacher in a rural area.
To some that means too long of a commute, too few opportunities, but to me it’s
in many ways a blessing.
In today’s world, there does not need to be a geographical
divide; it’s a world of fast tracking, fast moving, instantaneous technology. I
have chosen to embrace the opportunities that technology can provide students,
and perhaps the most instantaneous, the most rewarding thus far has been
through Twitter.
