Friday, May 10, 2013

Twitter Failure Produced TodaysMeet Success

Back in October 2012, Mr. Seamandel wanted to use Twitter with his ninth grade students as a means for communicating about writing.

Many problems occurred:

  • Couldn't log in on iPad consistently
  • Couldn't log out on iPad consistently
  • Couldn't adjust profile
  • Students really didn't understand (at that time) how Twitter worked
  • Couldn't access computers consistently to accommodate the learning environment
From that stemmed a great trial of a technology tool, todaysmeet.com , that created an incredible learning environment.


A room was set up for students to create and comment on Haiku poems that were created by students.  As Mr. Seamandel states,

First we did a basic exercise to ensure that students knew how it (Todaysmeet) worked.  Then, I had them write a haiku alone, or with a friend.   It had to fit the standard conventions of a haiku -- 5-7-5 and relating to nature. (Some students became stuck, and I allowed them to write about whatever they could think of.)  This worked out great because no student was really willing to read or share what they had written, but jumped at the opportunity to post it online and have peers read it as it popped up on the board.  Ended up being a great exercise and a way to showcase writing/poetry without tying a name to it!

While the room that was created for this has expired, a great feature of todaysmeet.com, the opportunity to use a technology tool to engage students in poetry was outstanding!

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