Twitter in Education

From my experience using Twitter this week and doing some research on how it can be utilized in education, I found that Twitter may be a social media outlet that I could use with my learners. This semester, I am teaching college EFL students English 101 courses: one oral skills course and two writing courses. For my Oral Skills 1 course, one of the objectives is for students to be able to present in front of an audience using proper academic English. The article “The Ultimate Guide to Using Twitter in Education” contains so much information on ways to utilize Twitter in the classroom. From what I read, I thought I could use Twitter’s polling feature to have my Oral Skills 1 course students take class polls on particular topics and issues. After the votes are complete, I could pair students up and have them discuss, interpret, and present the findings on their polls in front of the entire class.

            For my writing course students, Twitter can get their creative thoughts put into writing. In the article “Can Tweeting Help Your Teaching?”, it highlights a middle school teacher’s usage of Twitter with his students. Gary Mayo is an eighth grade teacher from Maryland, and he used Twitter by connecting his class with other students around the world via storytelling. They all collaborated on an ongoing story, which each student contributed to in a form of a tweet. I really love this idea for two main reasons. Firstly, it would allow my students to be creative and add their twists to an ongoing plot. Secondly, it would give my leaners the opportunity to interact with other students globally. Kudos to Gary Mayo and his project!

#Chatting on Twitter…Go Figure!

#Chatting on Twitter…Go Figure!

This week, I experimented and experienced my first Twitterchat. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t really know exactly how to use Twitter. I made an account for school a few years ago, but only used it for a couple of months to follow our professor. After that, I never used my account again (in fact I don’t even remember the account name I made). So this week was a chance for me to revisit Twitter and really delve into what the buzz is all about.

            

I decided to join the #ELTchat on Twitter, which meets every Wednesday, as it was the group chat most relevant to my current professional setting. The Twitterchat lasted a little over an hour, followed by a “slow burn” (i.e. slow activity) of tweets for those who wanted to add on to the conversation afterhours. It was moderated by Marisa Constantinides. Each week, users can suggest topics and ELTchat has a poll in which we could vote from a list of potential topics on their blog; so I love the fact I had a say in what topic would be discussed in the chat. The topic for this week was about teachers teaching pronunciation and the initial tweet posed by our moderator was: “So what frightens people abt teaching pronunciation?”

At first, the flood of tweets coming in became a bit overwhelming. When I wanted to comment on one tweet or issue, a whole new set of tweets came in making my previously intended tweet irrelevant in that moment. Eventually, I got the hang of it and was able to contribute to the discussion and provide some beneficial comments for other educators (I had some liked tweets and one retweet =). I was amazed at the amount of information, practical tips, and resources I was able to gather from other’s tweets in just one hour! Twitter and in particular Twitterchat, seems to be a professional development – or more so— a professional network that I would continue to use in the future.