Grade School Twittering

Remember when you were in grade school and you were set up with a pen pal from another school? When I was in 3rd grade I had a great pen pal from California who wrote me notes on really cool aqua paper! California was so far away and obviously 3rd graders there were cooler than the ones in Maine because they had wonderful colored paper!

I loved having pen pals. Getting letters in the mail was as exciting to me as a trip to the amusement park. Kinda nerdy but the truth. I thought having a pen pal was wicked fun, but I see now that the point of it from a teacher's standpoint was for us to practice our cursive and written communication skills.

But kids today don't need to learn cursive or how to write a page long letter to a friend in a far off place. No -- not when you've got TECHNOLOGY on your side? Why sit down to craft a nice letter on aqua paper when you've got email and facebook?

Heck! Second graders in Orono are learning how to use Twitter! Why write out a whole long letter, fix your spelling mistakes, address it, put a stamp on it, and walk it alllllll the way out to a mailbox when you can let someone else know what you're up to in just 140 little characters?

Debbie White of Asa Adams School in Orono thinks Twittering from one class to the next is cool. And so do her kids, apparently. I mean, why spend all that time forming multiple sentences when just one will do?

Debbie White said she decided to bring the micro-blogging site to her classroom to help her pupils learn writing skills by composing messages, known as Tweets. - from Boston.com

I mean really! Kids these days are learning writing skills via Twitter? What can you possibly learn from writing one sentence about what your class is doing? Is this really teaching our kids writing skills?