1. The community of foreign language teachers on Twitter Pamela M. Wesely, The University of Iowa WAFLT 2011 Summer Institute, August 4, 2011

2. Outline of Presentation Intro discussion: What do you think of Twitter? Defining our professional development communities What I did to gather evidence about FL teachers on Twitter What I found Questions and further discussion

3. What do you think of Twitter?

4. What does a computer know about being a flower?

5. Or…what does Twitter know about foreign language teaching?

6. List five things that you know about Twitter on a piece of paper.

7. Share them with a person sitting near you. List five things that you know about Twitter on a piece of paper.

8. So what exactly is Twitter?

9. Web 2.0 Brief Review Web 1.0 Read-only Passive One-way flow of information Examples: static websites only changed by “owner” (personal or corporate pages); in classes, often used in Webquests or other information-gathering activities Web 2.0 Read-and-write Interactive Two-way flow of information Examples: social networks (Facebook, NING); media sharing (Flickr, Youtube); social bookmarking (Diigo, Delicious); blogs, RSS feeds, microblogs

10. Twitter definition 140-character posts: “Preparing my presentation for the WAFLT conference, going to be Skyping in!” Or a link: “Here’s the conference webpage of where I’ll be presenting tomorrow at WAFLT: http://bit.ly/pNcNoN” http://bit.ly/pNcNoN # is a hashtag #langchat #edchat

11. Twitter definition

13. Defining our professional development communities

14. A question for you: What is a PLC to you? Defining our professional communities

15. A question for you: What is a PLC to you? How about a PLN? Defining our professional communities

16. Community of Practice: “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” (Wenger) Defining our professional communities

17. What I did to gather evidence about FL teachers on Twitter

18. My Research Questions 1. What are these communities of practice like? 2. How do participant teachers describe their attitudes about and experiences with these communities?

19. Data Sources Researcher participant observation in the general Twitterverse from October 2010 to the present Researcher participant observation in #langchat conversations every Thursday night from January 2011 to present Interviews with nine K-12 US FL teachers who are on Twitter, April 2011

20. Interview Participants

21. (some of) What I found

22. These teachers are focused on FL and technology Twitter has primarily been used by community members as a way to share resources related to language teaching, the target culture(s), and other types of language tips and tricks. The members of the community are early adopters who seek technological innovation in a number of different ways, and they are very competent in navigating newer technologies.

23. These teachers are dealing with isolation Many of the community members are either objectively isolated (i.e. only foreign language instructor in the district), or perceived that they were isolated, and they participate in this community for the purpose of creating relationships that would give them the colleagues they didn’t feel they had.

24. Relationships on Twitter The community members described a variety of supportive and sustained relationships that they had created with one another that were purely Twitter-mediated. The community members also described a variety of relationships that began on Twitter but then extended into face- to-face, no longer purely computer-mediated, hybrid relationships.

25. Learning on Twitter Twitter, particularly the hashtag chats, are the site of a great deal of creation and contributions to a knowledge base. This exchange on #langchat: A: and students can always earn back half the points they lost by correcting afterward, with no limit on chances B: how are "points" a valid assessment? points have nothing to do with proficiency in a language. [B’s statement was retweeted several times, essentially echoed by other participants] C: Grades do not reflect anything. A:I understand the sentiment, but it's counterproductive in the way classrooms are forced to work A: Listen, I would love more than anyone to eliminate grades altogether. I have the most relaxed grading and late policy in school. A: But the fact is I teach at a college-prep school and I have to assign points for production regardless of what I wish I could do. B: no reason to defend, i think we can all agree that proficiency and grades don't mesh. A: I understand, really, but I also need to keep students and parents on my side Pam: Regarding parent/student expectations - it weighs very heavy in some contexts - not at all in others. That's been my experience. A: In advanced electives when all the potential valedictorians are in my class, VERY heavily. An important characteristic of the community is also the fact that smaller groups find each other and break off according to their interests, to create different collaboration groups to work on individual topics and initiatives.

26. The Twitter transformation Joining Twitter and participating in this community has been transformative for these teachers, both professionally in their practice and personally in terms of their motivation to teach.

27. The Twitter transformation Joining Twitter and participating in this community has been transformative for these teachers, both professionally in their practice and personally in terms of their motivation to teach. …so what about you guys?

28. Questions? Contact information: Pamela M. Wesely, University of Iowa, pamela-wesely@uiowa.edu, 319-335-5261 @pamwesely