Twitter has had a rise in popularity since it first began in 2006. I use twitter constantly to follow my favorite celebrities, political pundits and singers. I am a big fan of #livetweet as I like to voice my opinion during events like political debates, or less important TV premiers and finales. I love twitter and love how we use it in class. But after reading things like the article on Tyler Clementi, I have seen how social media can turn sour. Even a presidential candidate takes to twitter to say some “nasty” things about others. In the culture balancing between #nofilter on what we say and being #polticallycorrect, I wonder how a teacher can use students love of social media and twitter to her advantage.
Twitter can be an effective learning tool. As we have seen in our own class, we can answer questions in real time using the class hashtag. I have thought about conducting a twitter poll as a sort of exit ticket to gauge students’ opinions on my class or target their understanding of a concept. But, using social media in schools is always a risk. As we discussed in our group work last week, many schools restrict certain websites on their school Wi-Fi. A teacher who wants to use social media in class could face pushback from administration because of the fear students will use social media during other classes to cyberbully classmates. These are very real concerns, however, I feel we cannot ignore or censor social media use in schools.
Based on the study we read by Carr for last week, media literacy is not taught in schools and should be. Despite the risks, social media is used by students and instead of discouraging use, teachers can encourage “proper” use. If we take after Carr’s study, as educators, we can teach students to view the media they consume with a critical lens. We can use Twitter to show how certain people have a bias based on organizations they represent. We can also look at Twitter followers in order to analyze who the audience is for a particular person and how their audience shapes their Twitter content. If educators teach critical analysis of social media, students will be empowered to form their own opinions rather than take everything as fact.
In regards to language content, students could use Twitter by typing in the hashtag of a particular city. For example, students could type #paris, looking for pictures of the city to learn about landmarks. They could also use a city’s hashtag to look up current events in the target language they are learning. The teacher could help direct them towards reliable sources. If the teacher knew someone, a fellow educator, who speaks French, students could do a live Q&A via Twitter asking questions in French. I am a big proponent of using Twitter in class but realize that I could face challenges from administration. However, I will fight to explain the importance of media literacy for adolescents today.
#medialiteracy
Carr, Poltical Conscientization of Media (Il)literacy, 2009
I love the idea of using Twitter as an exit ticket! I would love to incorporate into my class but am not sure how practical it would be. Perhaps in the future when I have my own classroom I could try it and see how it goes. And a lot of what you said echoes my post – that the use of Twitter in the classroom really relies on if the school internet connection has it blocked or not (I said the same thing about YouTube). Hopefully schools will begin to realize that having these sites unblocked IS worth the education it can allow them to receive.
Your idea about a live Q&A with a French speaker or French students is awesome. I’ve had such a hard time in my Italian classroom finding ways to get my students to have meaningful and authentic communication in the target language. A live Q&A would be a great interpersonal activity (or even presentational writing activity). A great situation would be to connect with an English classroom in France and have different assignments, some being in French to benefit your students, and some being in English to benefit French students. Now that would hit a lot of ACTFL standards!