Its About Connections

The COOLEST thing happened today.  I know that's not the most technical or educational jargon, but it was cool.  This morning, my third graders were participating in a TweetQuest about Saturday's Supermoon.  We have been working on determining importance in non fiction texts and being metacognitive about the information.  The children were in the midst of putting all of this together in a media of their choice (not planned, but they asked) when one group excitedly called me over.  and, this is what they had to show me:

Interestingly, this kiddo (when we talk about the power of Twitter) is usually the one who talks about how great it is if you have to be home because you can find out what's going on in the classroom.  Being eight and nine I never expected one of my students to do this, so imagine my surprise when it did!  This soon followed:

A few complex Twitter things are happening here: getting the link for the tweet that was sent and then shrinking that link so that it fits in the url.  But, then ... the social implications!  Because of Twitter the children were able to (authentically) share their learning outside of our classroom walls.  Because of Twitter the children felt very important to their ill classmate ~ he took the time to send a message that implies he missed us.  Because of Twitter, the children were able to let their sick classmate know that he was included in our group even if he could not be there with us.  Implying how important he is to our group.  Connections.  That's what Twitter is all about out.