Introducing students of EDU 401 course to twitter

1. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The Royal Commission at Yanbu
Yanbu University College
Yanbu Al-Sinaiyah
Microblogging: What we need to know
about Twitter
Applied linguistics Department
Educational Technology
EDU 401-112
2011-2012

2. Presentation Outline
What?
In teaching English?
How?(work)
How? (use)
Drawbacks?

3. What is it?

4. What is it?
 Twitter is a website, owned and operated by
Twitter Inc., which offers s social networking
and microblogging service, enabling its users to
send and read messages called tweets.
 Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140
characters displayed on the user's profile page.
 Wikipedia.com

5. Twitter Curve
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/472202619/

6. How does it work?
 Create an account.
 Personalize your page.
 Keep your tweets “protected”.
 Start entering tweets in the text field.
 Your tweets will be displayed in a chronological order.
(micro-blog posts).
 Add friends.
 Look for followers.
 Start subscribing to other users‘ (followers).

7. How people are using Twitter?
breaking news…
timely announcements
major means of communicating
program information
sharing reflection on learning

8. How people are using Twitter?
How to Use Twitter Hashtags
May 2010: “Twitter beats media in
reporting Egyptian revolution."
Real time search tool- being used by
some as an alternative search tool
to Google

9. How to Use Twitter Hashtags
mark keywords or topics in a Tweet.
organize your tweets
help target your audience
will get you more retweets
can get you more followers
#hashtag is really just a way of categorizing your tweets so that they are
part of a narrowed conversation and they’re easier to find in Twitter search.

10. How to Use Twitter Hashtags
mark keywords or topics in a Tweet.
organize your tweets
help target your audience
will get you more retweets
can get you more followers
#hashtag is really just a way of categorizing your tweets so that they are
part of a narrowed conversation and they’re easier to find in Twitter search.

14. http://twictionary.pbworks.com/w/page/22547584/FrontPage

15. How does it work?

16. How does it work?

17. How does it work?

18. How does it work?

19. As a teacher, what can you do with Twitter?

20. Examples for using Twitter with EFL students
•Share useful information and resources with
students.
Reminding students about homework •Carry out quick surveys and polls to collect
feedback on tasks, projects, etc.
•Ongoing storytelling in 140 characters
Providing feedback about presentations and classes
Receive text messages instead of e-mail messages
Students be better users of English language.
The immediacy of the messages helps the students feel like more of a community
Connections, resources, ideas

21. Examples for using Twitter with EFL students
Send a few messages with the service each week as part of
a writing assignment.
Invite students to follow your Twitter feed, in which
you can write several short thoughts each day.

22. Examples for using Twitter with EFL students
Ask your students to answer the question "What are you
doing?” on Twitter ???????? times a day.
Review all their answers everyday and offer corrections as
and when required.

23. Drawbacks?
What’s the point?
“I’m eating pickles

24. Lab Work

25. Barriers against Teacher take-up
- “twittiquete”
- impression of Twitter cliques

26. Summary

27. References
•Before and After Twitter: Personal Learning Environments
http://www.slideshare.net/bcgstanley/before-and-after-twitter-personal-learning-environments
•Tweet and Teach English
http://eltweekly.com/more/2008/12/tweet-and-teach-english
•ELTWeekly Issue 1: Tweet and Teach English
http://eltweekly.com/more/2008/12/tweet-and-teach-english/
•Twictionary: The Dictionary for Twitter
http://twictionary.pbworks.com/w/page/22547584/FrontPage
•Twitter for Academia
http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
Trial by Twitter: The Rise and Slide of the Year's Most Viral Microblogging Platform
by Vance Stevens http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/int.html