Skip to main content

Twitter in Education: It's a Small World


It's a Small Small World: Not My Image
Part of my job as an English Language Teacher (ELT) is to make language and content more accessible. Honestly it's the most important (read: satisfying) parts of my job. Students arrive at school not knowing English, not understanding American culture, or the American school system. They walk in overwhelmed and confused. It's my responsibility to make them feel welcome, comfortable, understood, and hopefully a little less confused. 

Fortunately, since we live in 2017 there are many resources at our fingertips. This week I spent time exploring Twitter and how it can help me bridge the gap between home and school; to make connections. To start my exploration I went to one of my favorite educational websites: Edutopia. (if you aren't familiar, you should be, it's like Wikipedia for teachers!) I searched Edutopia for Twitter and found two great articles: Making Connections through Twitter and 100 Twitter Tips for Teachers.

The first article has a video which I found to be very powerful. It shows how Twitter has been used in a real live school with actual teachers. I love seeing the technology I read about in action, it makes it so much more meaningful and authentic! In the video students are engaged and connected with other students from other districts and states. "Beyond just the four walls that are in this classroom and with their teacher or their parents, they can share it with classes in Chicago, or across the world," Thornton says. "And that's really important to them, because truly what they're doing, as we know, matters." These are the kind of connections I want students to make. That their world (home language, culture, values) has a place in the larger world. That their classroom community can be accessed and that they have a place in it. It's all about building connections.
Image Not My Own

 The second article is much more practical. It's the hows of using Twitter successfully. It offers advice and etiquette as well as suggestions for using Twitter both professionally and in the classroom. While I found a lot of the suggestions useful it also left me with a lot of questions. In particular, how can I use Twitter effectively at the K-3 level? Many of my students do not have access to Twitter like middle school or high school students would. It's something I could use in the classroom but I wouldn't be able to have students Tweet at me after school or on the weekends. While I could use it to communicate with parents, I wouldn't have the direct student connection. There are still a lot of possibilities, I just need to keep thinking!

Making students feel welcome, comfortable, understood, and less confused is a major challenge, but one of the best ways I know to help students acclimate is to show them that I know who they are and I understand where they are coming from. I know what it's like to show up at a new school in a new country and be forced into this new and strange language. For me I build these connection by connecting their home culture and home language with English and American culture. Twitter is a part of that. Using Twitter can help me make that gap just a little bit smaller. It's a small world after all.

 Many of the other websites I found were more basic and fundamentals focused. Since I am not a Twitter novice I thought they were a bit redundant for the purpose of the blog above. It's still good information, it just wasn't what I was looking for. I especially like the lists of hashtags and people to follow. The prezi is great too!

 Additional Links:
Educational Hashtags Galore
50 Educators to Follow on Twitter
Prezi on Twitter in the Classroom
What I Hate About Twitter Blog
Getting Started on Twitter for ELT
How to Expand PLN
Introduction to Twitter Chats
Twitter for PD in 140 Characters
Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 17, 2017 at 7:27 PM

    I like the idea of using Twitter to connect with your students by building connections with them. As you say, the idea of coming to a new school and learning a new language must be very daunting so using a "cool" technology that they like can help bridge that gap between cultures.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mod 3: An Overabundance of Chalboards: Where are the netizens?

Coming back to teaching in the States has been in some ways very relieving. Youtube isn't blocked. I can access my g-mail. Internet speeds are fast. And I am no longer covered in chalk. If you take a look at the picture you will notice lots of things, but I want to focus on the large green monstrosity in the center of the image. China has one of the largest populations on the planet. It also has some of the most cell phone dependent people I have met in my life. Not a day went by where I didn't witness someone run into something or someone, trip, or fall because of their focus and dedication to whatever was happening on their phone. So how come a country with billions of people and a culture full of dedicated cell phone users has no technology in their classrooms? Now that isn't true of every school or every classroom. The universities I taught in had projectors and occasionally internet access. Training schools are also well equipped. For the most part, however, most o...
8 comments
Read more

Using Blogs in the Classroom to Meet Learning Standards

Mod 2: Joining the Blogosphere It has been more than three years since I taught under the Common Core. Syncing back up has been a concern of mine as I rejoin the NYS K-12 TESOL gig. Not only am I jumping back into the Common Core, I am also jumping into early elementary, something I've not done full time before. Kindergarten and first grade are a bit intimidating but I am looking forward to the challenge. One of the things I have always wanted to do with young learners is to blog and Tweet. Blogging has many benefits. In my opinion, having younger students blog gives them ownership over their learning, something they may not generally have at their level when so much is decided for them. Mrs.Davison is a Kindergarten teacher who is blogging and tweeting with her class. She has some neat ideas about how to use blogs in the classroom. She uses part of her blog to track where visitors are signing on from and has met curriculum goals like geography with her blog. Integrating an...
7 comments
Read more

A Learner is like a Teacher

"Life is like a box of chocolates" and Learners are like Teachers Connectivism in Education What is connectivism? Connectivism is a learning theory that sees knowledge as networked and outside of an individual learner. "Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical." (Siemens)   In traditional educational models teachers filled their students with knowledge, knowledge that didn't change or adapt. Students were empty vessels waiting for knowledge to be dumped in by their teachers. Image Not Mine In today's system, or at least in my classroom, that belief of teachers as gatekeepers and holders of knowledge has changed. Teachers are no lon...
2 comments
Read more