Elementary

ELEMENTARY

 * Elementary and Middle School Use**

In the lower grades, to date, school use of Twitter is almost exclusively as a teacher resource, typically for collaborating, sharing, and socializing with other teachers; or as a home-school communication tool. > []
 * Lesson plans - as an indication of how cutting-edge this is, a Google search on 14 November 2009 with keywords __"twitter lesson plan" "middle school"__ yielded only 7 results! In fact, there was only one actual, bare bones lesson plan (photo at right). In this plan, the teacher - for an unspecified reason - is at home on a school day, using his computer to communicate with his classroom, where the students all have computer access and Twitter accounts. (The need for an email address in order to create a Twitter account can be a significant barrier to the tool's usefulness in the earlier grades.) This fledgling example, rough as it is, could well represent the direction we are moving in!
 * Schools may use Twitter to update parents on upcoming events, changes in schedules (basketball cancelled, snow day, etc.), and in emergency situations (shootings, gas leaks, fire)
 * Twitter may be linked to the school's webpage or blog, and the library or media center may have its own uses for this tool such as informing parents about book fairs, project resources, or schedule reminders