Tweet, Woof, Squeak!

We've all heard of Twitter; some of us are even on Twitter. The new and interesting online "toys" I've come across recently are Woofer and Squeaker. Woofer is macroblogging: it requires a minimum of 1400 characters before it sends; Squeaker requires exactly 14 characters before it sends. Both of these are a lot harder than it sounds (try it!), but could be an interesting tool to use in the classroom with students.

The downsides to this are that it's on the internet, so it's not as controlled and private as might be preferred; the other is that the students are required to have a Twitter account to utilize these. Both might preclude elementary usage, but for secondary students, it can be a great way to work with them on precision in writing. Try them out and tell me what you think! :-)

Edmodo

Just found out about Edmodo via Twitter. Basically, it's Twitter for schools. I just signed for my own account and plan on getting my students on it when we are in the media center on Thursday. It has some interesting possibilities, particularly since through it, I can send links, files, assignments, and so on to my students as well as an RSS feed. Last week I spent some time talking with my students about both Twitter and various RSS readers, and I'm encouraging them to use both of those for research as they begin to start their end of term projects. I'll play around with this and report on it more, most likely at the June training, but figured I'd give people a heads up on it now.