Three years ago, I wrote my first post about Twitter.

If you are looking for a way to keep parents informed in bite-sized portions, Twitter may be a good solution for you as it can integrate nicely into a parent’s handheld lifestyle. Likewise, Twitter can help students make connections in their learning.

Once again, I have been searching out and reading advice about how to use Twitter in the classroom. I’d like to pass along a couple of good resources that you should check out if you are using Twitter already or considering using it with your students:

Silvia Tolisano‘s Twitter HOTS & Establishing a Twitter Routine in the Classroom

This post has a great visual K-8 guide as well as an example of how the Twitter policy has been explained at one school. It also starts to examine Twitter as a tool that can really stretch students’ thinking. I really the etiquette section and emphasis on practicing digital citizenship.

Five-Minute Film Festival: Twitter in Education from Edutopia

Still not sure how tweeting really would fit in your classroom or why a teacher would even want to dive into this universe? The Five-Minute Film Festival has some great videos to check out that will hopefully answer a lot of questions and get you thinking about the possibilities. It’s one stop shopping on the subject.

And of course, since I’m talking about Twitter, I have to mention a great resource that has emerged within it: #Comments4Kids

A while ago, I wrote a post about how #Comments4Kids can impact the writing process for kids. This is a great way to harness the power of Twitter in your classroom. As adverse as it may be to your own upbringing, this is an example of when it is OK to talk to strangers. It’s a great way to model for students the positive experiences that can be take place on the web. We often focus too much on the negative. The result: people are scared, and good opportunities are missed.

That brings me to the recurring theme during my whole #ETMOOC experience: sharing and being connected. Either by letting a parent have a snapshot of  their child’s classroom life or having students learn how to engage with a real world audience and practice some important netiquette: Twitter is one way to start building relationships in our digital world.