Adil Tugyan MIE

General Descriptions What is twitter? What can we do? 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 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

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

How to Start Twitter? Go to: http://twitter.com/ Create account Settings (personal information, background etc) Search Follow @reply

Sample Classroom Activities 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 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