Twitter
Shingo Ichikawa
General Descriptions
• What is twitter?
– Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging
service that enables its users to send and read
messages known as tweets.
• What can we do?
– Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters
displayed on the author's profile page and delivered
to the author's subscribers who are known as
followers.
– Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of
friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can
send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short
Message Service (SMS) or external applications.
What separates it from other similar
technologies?
– Simple, quick and frequent (vs. blogs)
– Less pressure (vs. chat)
– Personal (vs. internet forum)
Why should we be using this technology? / What
specific pedagogical aims could this technology
target?
– Input:
• no permission required to follow someone; short
texts; authentic; update
– Output:
• increasing learners’ output; large audience;
repeating the same expressions
– Interaction:
• enhancing interactions between users
Why should we be using this technology?
• Teachers can use micro-blogging to get in touch
with students.
– Notice board: teacher can send memos on tasks,
exams or events.
– Resources: Recommend resources and share links,
web pages, videos, etc.
– Answers: Teachers can solve students’ doubts or
answers very quickly
– Feedback: Collect students’ opinions about the class
– Motivate: Keep interest high helping students to give
a sense and utility to what they have learnt.
Other Micro-blogging Services
– Some services use a similar concept as Twitter but combine the
micro-blogging facilities with other services, such as file sharing.
Other services provide similar functionality, but within closed
networks for corporations, nonprofits, universities, and other
organizations.
– Plurk (http://www.plurk.com/)
• Updates are shown on a timeline where they are chronologically
ordered in a very visual way
– Jaiku (http://www.jaiku.com/)
• Its lifestream that enables users to put together all information about
what we are doing on-line with other services (e.g., Flickr)
– Edmodo (http://www.edmodo.com)
• It provides a way for teachers and students to share notes, links,
and files
Why did you choose this particular version as
opposed to other available versions of the
technology?
• Twitter
– Simple
– Large number of users
(http://s.hamachiya.com/twitter/population)
– Many useful applications
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/thetop-20-twitter-applications/)
Terminology 1
• Tweet
– Each of your Twitter posts or updates is known as a tweet. Some
people refer to them as “twits”, but the official term is “tweet.”
Each tweet is no longer than 140 characters.
• Following
– While Facebook requires that all relationships be reciprocal,
Twitter allows for one-way relationships. If you find Twitter users
who are interesting, you can "follow them" to subscribe to their
tweets. They do not necessarily have to follow you back, though
the more social users will want to follow you back
• Timeline
– The “timeline” page is the homepage which displays tweets from
all the people you are following. On the sidebar (column on the
right of each Twitter page)
– Public timeline
• Direct Messages
– Links to your Inbox/Sent messages (140 characters or less) that
are privately sent to and from you
Terminology 2
• @replies
– Use an at sign (@) in front of a Twitter username to reply to
someone, to refer to them, or direct a new message to
somebody. e.g., @shingo
• Retweeting (RT)
– Retweeting is the act of sharing someone else’s tweet with your
followers – spreading the word wider. To identify a retweet, the
Twitter convention is to put RT at the start of the retweet and to
include the Twitter username of the person you are retweeting
like attributing a quote.
– e.g., RT @SCBWI Our summer conference is August 7-10.
• Hashtags (#)
– Use the sharp or number sign (#) as part of a “hashtag” to
organize and categorize your information.
– e.g., new chapbook “skittling and fiddling” is available online
today! #poetry
How to Start Twitter?
1. Go to: http://twitter.com/
2. Create account
3. Settings (personal information,
background etc)
4. Search
5. Follow
6. @reply
Sample Classroom Activities
• Reference: Castro, M. (2009)
• Headline:
– The students are given a newspaper article and they have to
write a headline for it.
• Collaborative writing:
– All the students have to create a short story or fable, starting
from the first post sent by the teacher.
• Secret person:
– The students have to guess the secret person sending questions
to the teacher, to which he can answer only yes or no.
• Meeting point:
– A space where all students can discuss an issue decided by the
teacher.
Sample Classroom Activities
• Film scripts (Perifanou, 2009)
– Step1: Each group choose one scene from
famous Italian films prepared by a teacher
– Step 2: Each group write dialogue of the
scene
– Step 3: Teacher gave feedback on the
dialogues
– Step 4: Each group perform the scene in
class
– Step 5: Voting for the best script creation
References
• Castro, M. (2009). The use of microblogging in
language education. Proceedings of the third
international wireless ready symposium. 8-11.
http://opinion.nucba.ac.jp/~thomas/castro2009.p
df
• Perifanou, M, A. (2009). Language microgaming: fun and informal microbloggin activities
for language learning. Communications in
Computer and Information Science. 49. 1-14.