A HEAD teacher and her staff are embracing the Twitter revolution to improve learning at a Newport school.

Denise Richards has put the whole of St Julian's School through Twitter workshops so students and staff are up to speed on the latest techniques.

Mrs Richards, the leadership team, the school's house teams and many departments are now communicating to students, staff and parents via the popular social media tool.

Some departments are even conducting Twitter-based projects where students in maths, English and science can discuss assignments online.

And PE students are consulting with a catalogue of famous sporting stars and Olympic heroes to help inspire them and add to their lesson projects.

Assistant head teacher David Beesley said: "Twitter is working really well and our students have benefited by being able to interact with their sporting heroes to aid their projects. In years past this would have been extremely difficult to do.

"Daley Thompson and Kelly Holmes have tweeted back to me about their training sessions and warm ups for example."

Head of e-learning Graham Barker said that now prime minister David Cameron, and the Pope are on Twitter it was vital schools were up to scratch and made the best use of the latest technology tools to promote learning in a modern, fast-moving world.

Mrs Richards and other teachers regularly send out tweets to encourage pupils, especially at exam time, and it is also used to gather pupils' opinion on things happening at the school.

St Julian's School is 100 years old but is aiming to be 'cutting edge' with the very latest technology for its 1600 students.

It has embraced mobile phones, Twitter and iPads in lessons and pupils can also get information via QR codes around the school.

And it seems the trend is catching on in other areas as Cwmcarn School used the social media website to set pupils work after the schools was closed due to an asbestos scare in October.