Saturday, March 3, 2012

#FarAwayFridays

Recently I saw a tweet come across my feed and one of the teacher's I follow from Ontario, Canada.  Her name is Angie Harrison or @TechieAng on Twitter.  She tweeted, "Looking for an adult who loves Dr Suess & is willing to read aloud one of his stories via Skype tomorrow to our grade 3 class 

I then saw her interaction with another elementary Twitter teacher I follow @Grade1 and Aviva was lining up a time to Skype in and read to Angie's class so I thought, what the heck, I could do it.  So I tweeted Angie and told her I was up for it.  In a matter of minutes I was lined up to read the following day, Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!  My personal, all-time favorite book to read to kids.  As a principal, on #drseussbday's I was always asked to come into lower elementary classrooms and read to them.  I always enjoyed it.  

This experience was no exception.  It was fantastic!  I was skyping into an amazing teacher's classroom in Canada who thinks outside the box, she uses Twitter to flatten the globe, and on this day I was in Canada for a little while.  How cool is that?  I busted out a CAT in the HAT hat and surprised the kids with that!  Ha!

Within this great idea of Angie's, her husband Brian Harrison or @bharrisonvp on Twitter, came up with an idea called #FarAwayFridays to go along with it.  And from that a Google Spreadsheet was born.  See it here: #FarAwayFridays This idea was to continue on with setting up educators skyping into classrooms all over the world from Far Away on Fridays.  What a great idea and a fabulous use of a #hashtag in twitter!  I love it!  I am so glad I tweeted back to Angie and got involved with it.  I will encourage and share this with as many teachers as I can because what a great way to show kids a love of reading and learn from others "Far Away".  

Check it out!  Get involved!  Pass it on! 

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