*

*

• Jack Dorsey

• San Francisco, California

• March 2006

*

• 2007 South by Southwest

Interactive (SXSWi) Conference

• Astronauts from NASA

International Space Station on

January 22, 2010.

*

• In 2007, about 400,000 tweets

per quarter.

• In March 2011, 140 million tweets

daily. June 2011, 200 million.

• Prominent events: the World Cup

and Michael Jackson’s death

*

• The words “Michael Jackson”

crashed Twitter servers – rate of

100,000 tweets/hour.

• Disasters such as earthquakes in

Haiti, Japan and Chile

• Political events: Arab Spring

*

*

• 1. Ask for and provide help

• 2. Share ideas

• 3. Get advice

• 4. Announce events

• 5. Follow celebrities

• 6. Follow topics of interest

• 7. Read the latest news

• 8. Pursue professional development

*

• 1. Offers opportunities to practice

specific language skills

• 2. Teaches sts to focus on what

they say

• 3. Keeps conversations going

inside and outside the classroom

• 4. Develops a sense of classroom

community

• 5. Provides a sense of the world

• 6. Offers the possibility of instant

feedback

• 7. Provides quick search on any

possible topic for discussion

• 8. Offers the teacher a tool for

announcing any event for the

class e.g. homework, speeches…

*

*The easiest use of Twitter is to answer the great question which the microblog was created for:

What are you doing now?

*Establish a number of times students could tweet answering the question.

*Establish a day and time when all students should tweet their answers to the question.

*Ask students to follow a news

channel such as:

*@BBCWorld

*@cnnbrk

*@BBCNews

*@NBCNewYork

Students comment on the latest news

that has surprised them or called their

attention.

*Celebrate important dates

*Ask students to use the Twitter search and look for an interesting Tweet they could RT on that special day:

*Mothers’Day

*Fathers’Day

*Saint Valentine`s

*International Environment Day

*They could compose their own messages and you could have a poll to vote on the best one.

*As a class, decide on a celebrity to

be followed and on a deadline to

bring the juicy gossip into class and

comment on what they have learned

about the celebrity:

*@sseagalofficial

*@justinbieber

* @LadyGaga

*@BarrackObama

*Use Twitter to comment about the

literature books that the class is

reading.

*At the end of each chapter, our

students and readers tweet at least

one comment about their

impressions of the story or the

characters.

*

*We proposed to our Advanced students to tweet in English as an after/during class project.

*We opened an account for the class and an application of GroupTweet.

*As students joined Twitter and started following the class Twitter, they were added as contributors.

*

*The project has a duration of three weeks to start and will later be evaluated if it should go on or not.

*Our proposal was that they should answer at least one tweet in relation to the grammar being studied in the lesson.

*And answer at least one tweet in relation to the content topic of the lesson.

*

*

*

*

*

Can you think of another activity

that could be done with the use of

Twitter to enhance/improve

language use outside the

classroom?

*

ZEINSTEJER, R. Transform and Tailor your Teaching with Twitter.

In Pro.T 2012. " evolving Pedagogies, evolving Englishes”;

02/17/2012; Buenos Aires, Argentina

Twitter – Wikipedia.org – access on 05/05/2012

A Beginner`s Guide to Twitter. In Youtube; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4tCn2KTLro&feature=related

GroupTweet.com

Images

Twitter. http://conecti.ca/2010/09/28. Access on 05/05/2012

Twitter. http://fcruzbello.es/tag/twitter. Access on 25/04/2012

Twitter bird icon. http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies.

Access on 25/04/2012

Twitter-sing. http://www.rizwanashraf.com/2009/07/11/50-

free-twitter-icon-and-button-sets. Access on 25/04/2012

*

*

Margarete Nogueiramargaretebrasilia@hotmail.com

Patricia Faustinopatricia.faustino@gmail.com