Twitter in the Classroom

"Thou shalt not use Twitter in the classroom".

Since when was this a rule of teaching? OK, so primary school age students are too young to have their own account, but does that mean the students can't use under the direction of the teacher/s? Maybe so, but an interesting one to ponder nonetheless.

Imagine students communicating with the world (in actual fact it would essentially be parents who follow) in real time some exciting findings in their learning and some of the work that they produce. Great!

We have teachers collaborating, we have parents engaging with this social media and we have education forums/hash-tags which work swimmingly, but I believe that students can involve themselves as part of their class routine. The big key here is 'under direction' of the teacher. Obviously promoting this to the students with no discussion and monitoring would be a recipe for disaster, and possibly illegal or at least against Twitter's terms and conditions of use. In fact it may promote students to investigate it independently by themselves at home. You would hope students would have been given the skills and strategies to ensure they stayed safe using this communication medium.

I'm not sure where I sit with this, but consideration should be given to this useful communication tool.
Mr N