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Twitter -the alternative to a school / class webpage




Nowadays it is almost impossible to neglect the use of twitter as a communication resource. Today Twitter cannot be "avoided" in the ICT and ELT worlds.



USING TWITTER:

Pros

-Much simpler / quicker to set up and update than any other webpage or blog
-Messages are always short (140 word-limited per post) , hence readable...(as long as text conveys meaning), which directs us to another advantage:
-It forces the sender to be concise and accurate in the message he wants to deliver

Cons

-Writing to 140 characters could leads to bad grammar skills
-Privacy is at risk
-Public timelines read by this network user do not contribute to organised info, i.e. it hard to follow threads

The disadvantages mentioned above are not such, though.

Regarding the bad grammar, it must be considered that you -as a teacher/tutor will have to monitor every single tweet published in the network. In order to do this you can use private or direct messages or retweet tools "@"to get students to re-write properly / edit posts. You might even pre set a rule: RESPECT TO GRAMMAR , SPELLING and CORRECT VOCAB is to be observed (or else...you decide what comes after that...;)

As long as privacy is concerned, I think your students' tweets will have to be protected and their profiles very restricted.- In classroom situations it is better to have a private account. This might even help to prevent Twitter spam (students will have to be warned and encouraged to block those “followers” that have nothing to do with their classroom activities)

If we take the 3rd drawback into account, the solution is the use of hashtags (#)
They can transform your twitter page into a complete webpage (simpler from the graphics perspective)as hashtags can really work as different communication channels. For example #GroupKids1 or #ThePASTSIMPLEPractice #HW , etc.


Twitter can be at first glance a strange phenomenon and many don’t understand its purpose right away. However, Twitter is a powerful tool that is growing in popularity as word spreads of its potential capabilities. The idea of writing small blog posts of 140 characters or less to a group of your followers is actually a revolutionary new way to bring communities together, learn from each other, and keep updated with all that is happening.

Busy teachers may have found that Social Media practices are not only time consuming to learn but also to apply (as they are time consuming to "teach" as well). Blogs and resources alike might have been put off due to all that.
However microblogging platforms such as Twitter have come up to make ICT users' lives easier.
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