4. What We Tweet
• Tweets are a source of
information; people in certain
places, at certain events, sharing
at a global level
*GFW-great fire wall
5.
6. Tweets in Education
• Tweets are
– self-perpetuating
– generative
– authentic
• Tweeps / Twitterers (users)
– interpret input
– produce output
– engage in conversations
7. An Educational Networking Tool
Class chatter
Classroom community
Get a sense of the World
Track a Word
Track a Conference
Instant Feedback
Follow a Professional
Follow a Famous Person
Grammar
Rule Based Writing
Maximizing the Teaching Moment
Public Note Pad
Writing Assignment Source: AcademHack
www.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
8. Italian Students & Twitter
Twitterers can:
• be engaged in either synchronous or
asynchronous modes of
communication implementing the
same Web 2.0 tool
• use and interact with individuals or
community members in the L2; and
• participate in the virtual classroom
and in the L2 culture
The full study is available in the 2009 Calico Monograph Series
The Next Generation: Social Networking and Online Collaboration in Foreign Language Learning
Editors, Lara Lomicka and Gillian Lord. ISSN:1085-2999
9. Twitter as Individual & Community
Twitterers can:
• micro-blog about what they are
doing (learner written output)
• read what others are doing (learner’s
comprehensible input)
• communicate directly with someone
they are following (negotiation of
meaning)
10. The findings: Social media
Before this course
• 89% reported visiting at
least one social media
website regularly
• 76% visited three or more
different social media
platforms
• Only 1 student was
already micro-blogging
2
9
8
0
3
3
11
2
Did not like it
Neutral
Liked it
Loved it
Opinion after 14 weeks Initial impression
11. The findings: Distribution of tweets
Of tweets posted, one was
expected to be a reply
(i.e., to engage others in
dialogue)
• 60% of tweeted replies
were to students
• 25% were to the
professor
• 14% were to native
Italians
12. Students’ Reflections
• Twitter can transform social
networking to educational
networking.
• Twitter helped reduce affective
filters.
• Learners stated that twittering
had them asking for more
information and allowed them to
clarify using the L2.
13. Teaching with Twitter
• Create a Twitter handle for
academic use only
• Use class time to have
students create their handle,
follow classmates and tweet
for the first time
• Prompt them initially to have
them feel comfortable with
Tweeting
• Develop your best practices
for course objectives
16. In & Outside of the Classroom
BEYOND
• Have them talk about
themselves (recycle
grammar and vocabulary)
• Have them investigate
topics related to syllabi
content
• Have them investigate
language use (vocabulary
building)
IN
• Have them brainstorm
ideas and post them
• Get instant feedback on
topics using it as poll
device using hashtags
• Allow them to ask
questions and get
feedback instantaneously
from a larger language
community
Learners found it relevant to real-life language use and that it fostered a strong sense of community in which they were willing to participate.Their active participation via Twitter confirms the claims of Salaberry (2001) and Sotillo (2006)—computer-mediated communication increases levels of interactivity & fosters community building.Group membership, as Donath and boyd (2004) remind us, has the profound effect on the way people work, the opportunities they have, and the structure of their daily life and it benefits the members if there is valuable information or opportunities to be shared between them. With more frequent tweeting, students felt more comfortable and they became more confident about communicating in Italian. Some students remarked that the tweets improved their writing in Italian in terms of grammar and vocabulary—they acknowledged that the replies of the teacher/research also benefitted their learning—, as well as contributed to their knowledge of Italian culture.Twitter provided a context for the informal negotiation of meaning, an important component in the language acquisition process that is well documented for other forms of CMC (Pellettieri, 2000; Tudini, 2003).This interaction, which has them negotiate meaning in a rich, learner-centered community, also provides opportunities for unforeseen exchanges in terms what is being said (given the generative nature of the tweets), how it is said (in view of the message size constraint) and by whom it is being said (considering the number of members in the community).
