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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Trying to flap my wings and fly......Week Two of the Twitter Experiment





Trying to flap my wings and fly......

I have been using my own PLN (Personal Learning Network) to try and learn how to harness this Twitter business.

I still have more questions than I do answers, but I figure I will share my progress here, and hopefully pretty soon, will have both honed my expertise AND shared the process with you here.

My PLN is not a very organized one - but it works for me. The first thing I do, is I go to my mailing list of GTA (Google Teachers Academy) graduates - a source which invariably comes to my rescue with all of my Web 2 (not only Google) needs. I am in the middle of working through a thread which is providing lots of helpful hints!  My other sources are the English Teachers' Network of Israel (ETNI) list and the Facebook group we have "EFL Digital Pedagogy".

One of the emails from the GTA graduates, came from Carole Geneix (@CaroleGeneix), and this is what she wrote:
She uses Twitter as an "Exit ticket".

Her explanation: "Exit ticket = some kind of informal or formal survey at the end of class to check what they have retained from it, if they understood a particular concept you wanted them to teach, etc. (She) uses sometimes a GoogleForm, but Twitter is quick and personal, and fun so far."

I asked her how she deals with "creative spelling". I am an English teacher, and this is something that concerns me - since I work VERY hard teaching them NOT to be "creative" in their spelling. However since Twitter is limited to 140 characters (including punctuation, spaces, etc.) most tweeters out there DO use shortcuts such as "b" instead of "be" and "gr8" instead of "great". I know that when I am tweeting, I often leave out vowels (since we have all seen that email, I'm sure, that shows how we can understand something in English even though it is without vowels (if you aren't familiar with it, check this out). I had considered having a lesson teaching them accepted conventions of "creative spelling", however Carole suggests the following:  

"The 'no creative spelling' rule is actually very important for me. One of my goals is to teach them proper writing, so it's definitely something I will not compromise on. If they have several ideas they can tweet several times! Also, you realize pretty quickly when you get into the habit of tweeting how much useless things there are. The idea is to teach them to be analytical, concise and synthetical, and that really serves my purpose. They get really good at it pretty fast. I also want to start a competition about using ALL of the 140 characters. Could be fun." 

This actually makes sense to me. I have adopted her approach for now... if any of the readers here have a different opinion, I would love to hear it!


The final excellent tip she provided was about accounts:
"I do not use personal accounts. My students are high-schoolers, and they do have personal accounts, so if they did so then I would be able to see their stuff. Which I don't want to see. LOL. They use individual accounts that they created for school. I use an account that I created for all my classes (I also have a private account). Everybody follows everybody. My feed is posted on Moodle too. Note that I want their accounts to be public. You can make them private, but then it defies the purpose. It's a public, school account. It's out there, and it's a good experience. They know they are being watched and read."

So - I have followed her advice and opened a new twitter account for myself, as a teacher (@AdeleNHS) and plan to have the students do the same tomorrow. 

The final thing I needed to do in order to work with the tool in class tomorrow, was to find some way to project the Twitter feed in the class.  As I have mentioned before, I am lucky enough to teach in a school that has interactive whiteboards (IWB) in all the classes (don't be TOO jealous - we have them "thanks" to the fact that we got a new school built 5 years ago because we are in rocket range) and had been searching for a way to show the feed. I received a few recommendations, among them TweetBeam, which looks good but I wanted something more built-in for my class site. I then found a Googlesite, which has an explanation, as well as a webcast-tutorial for how to embed a Twitter feed into your Googlesite. (If you are interested in learning more about Goolgesites, he also has a TON of explanations for that in the other tabs). Like the author Tony Amsler (@TonyAmsler) writes, it's kind of "geeky" but with the tutorial and explanation that accompany it (as well as the fact that not being part of a GAfE, in this case, works to my advantage AND working with a PC, as opposed to a Mac also lets there be fewer steps) I actually found it doable! (Trust me - I got an even GEEKIER response than this one....)  




NOTE: After emailing with Tony, I realized that that the solution that is explained in his tutorial, is for showing ONLY the posts that _I_ write. (Thanks for that clarification, Tony.) It does not show the entire steam for #AdeleNHS, so, if anyone has a trick for embedding the stream of a conversation using a specific hashtag into a Googlesite, please do share it with me.

I also want to share with you two tutorials that one of the other GTA teachers,  Karen Mensing (@MsMensing) shared with me. The kids are significantly younger than my students, but they are cute, speak clearly and give some pretty succinct pointers! 






Another great resource I came accross (can't exactly remember how I stumbled upon it while mushing through the web) is the Livebinder "Educator's Guide to Twitter", the tip of which I have barely managed to scrape through, but is chock full of information about using Twitter in the classroom.

Here are some tasks I am thinking of assigning:

My students are doing their extensive reading (library books). I will have them tweet the following:

Stage One (just to get them tweeting):
1) The title of their book and their author.
2) The setting
3) A quote that they like.
4) Which character they would like to meet, and why.
5) What their impressions of their book are, as they read through it.

Stage Two (to get them interacting with each other):
1) Using our class hashtag (#AdeleNHS) and their friends' handles, each student will need to to ask someone a question about the book they are reading. (Especially if the asker has read the book before)
2) When they finish the book, they will be asked to write a short recommendation (without spoilers)

Stage Three:
They will be asked to record themselves doing an oral report about their library book when they finish it. They can post these on Twitter privately or publicly if they wish (alternatively, they will send it to me on What's App or Email). 

Stage Four:
After the vacation, this class will be going on a three day trip. I plan to ask them to report on interesting facts that they learn while on their trip (extra credit).


In general, I will suggest that students use twitter, with our class hashtag, to ask clarifying questions, whenever something is unclear. There are no stupid questions. All questions are legitimate, and if one student asks a question, others may be THINKING the same question, as well. 

I am really excited about the prospects here! What do you think of these ideas? Can any of you suggest how to harness Twitter for your EFL classrooms?

Digitally yours, 
@dele

@AdeleRaemer
@AdeleNHS

1 comment:

  1. Adele,
    You are certainly exploring the depths of using twitter in the classroom!Your post was very interesting to read! Do you find that the advantage of twitter over whatsapp is the brevity? Teach them to be concise? Or to use social media more responsibly?
    BTW, the livebinder you got as a forward from my PLN, LOL!
    Keep up the great work, always fascinating to read your posts!
    Naomi

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