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    At Heathcote we believe social media, and Twitter in particular, is great way to create a truly transparent learning community.
     
    Our teachers tweet actively throughout the day, sharing the great successes of our students. 
     
    For our parents, it is a great way to change the daily dinner-time conversation. No longer is the question "how was school today?" or "what did you do in school today?" which usually elicits a tepid response of "fine" or "nothing" for the students. Twitter allows us to share with parents what happened in school, in a real-time way. Now those dinner-time questions are not general but rather "I saw you were working in the garden today, what did you plant?" or "I saw your class was working on collaborative writing, what exactly is that, can you show me?"
     
    Twitter is a powerful tool to strengthen the home-school connection. It is also a great way to extend that connection to extended family. Grandparents out of state? No problem, a class Twitter page is a great way for them to be active participants in their grandchild's learning and growth experiences.
     
    We will never Tweet full names or other identifying student information, nor would we ever tweet assessment data. We tweet to celebrate the learning experience and to model for students productive and positive use of social media. We also tweet to give parents the glimpse into the classroom that wasn't possible in the past.
     
    Follow us on Twitter @HeathcoteSchool or check out our digital bulletin board celebrating all that is #heathcotepride!