Tweet Sheet

Twitter poses many possibilities for today's educators and learners. Not only can it serve as a professional development resource and networking tool, but it can also be used to engage students in one of their preferred writing styles (Edudemic). Below are a few ideas of how to incorporate Twitter into foreign language teaching.

Twitter is about collaboration, "[it] can open up new worlds to just about anyone involved in education. Parents can connect with one another and their children’s teachers, students can collaborate or participate in hashtag chats, and teachers can build a robust professional / personal learning network (PLN)," (Twitter Tips For Students and Teachers). There is great value in the networks that teachers are able to establish, but there is also wonderful potential for connecting with students and parents through Twitter.

The Teachers Guide to the Use of Twitter in the Classroom provides many practical suggestions for how to Tweet in the K-8 classroom. One idea proposed is to give students the task of “Twitterer” of the day to document what is going on in class. This could be easily applied to the foreign language classroom by assigning students the task, but using Spanish or another L2. Some other ideas from the guide include: assign specific topics for students to tweet about, create a class twitter and teach parents to subscribe, and have everyone tweet on paper then vote for the best quality tweet to publish. Again, these could easily be adapted by performing the tasks in the L2.

Moreover, in the L2 classroom students could use Twitter for authentic communication. Students could follow other classmates (or native speakers) and simply use Twitter for one of its main purposes (Tweeting updates, commenting, “staying in the know” about Hispanic celebrities). It could also be used as a type of forum for help with homework of areas of difficulty (#HwHelp). A Twitter-like exit slip could even be used, asking students to write a “Tweet” to summarize what was learned in class that day (only 140 characters), or give a hashtag for the day’s lesson.

Certainly, proper “Netiquette” (internet etiquette) would need to be covered as well as what is appropriate to Tweet, but with the proper parameters and security in place, Twitter can be a great way to connect, communicate, and collaborate with students, parents and other teachers. 

#ProfessionalNetworking

"Start a conversation, explore your interests, and be in the know," (Twitter). This is a more sophisticated description of how I always perceived Twitter, (constant status updates) but I think that it is more accurate. The options along the task bar on one's twitter page support these concepts as well - "@Connect," " #Discover," "Me." Twitter certainly does provide opportunities to form connections, discover new information and share your own.

#langchat on 10/03/13

I followed the Twitter Chat (a group of people tweeting about a specific topic), #langchat this week. As a first time Twitter user, I was not entirely sure what to expect. I joined in the chat about halfway through the scheduled time, so at that point it was unclear to me how it had been started or what the format was. I did not know if there was a specific topic for the evening, but it appeared that most of the participants were simply tweeting questions and replying to others. I later scrolled to the beginning of the chat and found that there was a topic, a moderator, and even an invitation to share some introductions (what level/what do you teach). This structure and order becomes less clear as the chat progresses. I found it a little difficult to follow and slightly overwhelming sorting through an endless list of questions and side conversations. 

Overall, I do see great potential for forming connections easily and quickly with other foreign language-teaching professionals; I am following the 2013 ACTFL teacher of the year! However I think it will take some adjusting and exploring. The Twitter Chat appears most helpful if you have the time to spend and can engage from the beginning, while simply following other education professionals requires less time commitment, but also less predictability (specific topics or ideas). I think this can be a good form, but not necessarily the best form of professional development for me. 

"One-World" Schoolhouse

How much has education changed from the Industrial Age to the Information Age to…tomorrow?

While advances in technology continue daily, advances in education seem to lag behind about a century. The education professionals and innovators featured in the Future Learning Documentary (2012) give greater insight into the already apparent backwards US education system of today. Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, UK, explains that education stemmed from war and military education goals. We are continuing to use an industrial mode of thinking that requires quiet and submission, a system designed to produce copies. This short documentary highlights many of the major issues the field faces today: motivation, purpose, engagement, and relevance. How can these be addressed in the 21^st century foreign language classroom?

Las Redes Sociales

Two words: social media. The Social Media Revolution (2011) quotes author and keynote speaker Erik Qualman, stating, “we don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it." Social media is certainly not the only option, but it is no longer optional. What better way to make learning Spanish, French, Russian, Mandarin, or any other target language relevant than by building connections and relationships with speakers of those languages? And what easier way to accomplish this than through social media?

Darren Cannell explains in the Educational Change Challenge (2010) that teachers must understand their [students’] culture in order to have credibility. He also expresses that we must “use it [technology] or lose it [relevance].” Students and educators need to not only see technology as a valuable learning tool, but as a necessary one. It is an essential part of students’ culture; it affects the way they acquire information, write and communicate with each other, and understand the world. Although society may not have a clear vision of what school is for (Educational Change Challenge), youth have a crystal clear one of what technology is for: discovery, play, entertainment, and communication. “Social media is about people,” (Social MediaRevolution) anywhere, using any language. There will be much less to translate once we fully tap into our students’ language and culture and bring our foreign language classrooms up to speed with today’s technology.

The world is our classroom.

Students are being educated in a totally different world than that in which the system was created – and they are being prepared for an unknown world that does not yet exist. Foreign languages are far less "foreign" with speakers just a tag, comment or Skype call away. We have come from a one-room to a one-world schoolhouse (Cisco Systems in Educational Change Challenge), an exciting change that opens up vast opportunities for foreign language education of today – and tomorrow!