In which 10 Twitter applications might change your global mind and possibly your language classroom
Posted By Kevin Gaugler on July 10, 2009
In spite of all the talk about Twitter in connection with the Iranian elections and all things international as of late, I doubt that many of my university colleagues will be including Twitter on a syllabus this fall. I’ve talked before about the “Twitter Cycle” or the fact that, at first glance, Twitter appears trivial, and even, dare I say, stupid. The fact that one’s thoughts need to be distilled to 140 characters or less constitutes a seemingly outwardly unacademic endeavor and therefore many open a Twitter account, declare it the dumbest thing ever and never return again. In this post I have two bold goals: to briefly lay out the case why Twitter is the platform for the globally minded and to provide 10 tools that I believe are central to those interested in all things global, including language learning.
Why do you think it takes some time to find its usefulness?
The Twitter Life Cycle graph might help to illustrate why it is that Barbara and I are still blogging about Twitter. About four months ago, Barbara wrote a great introduction to Twitter for the language classroom. Then, we followed up with a podcast episode in which we interviewed Enza Antenos-Conforti and discussed how she uses Twitter to teach Italian at Montclair State University in New Jersey. In both of these pieces we focused on the main function of Twitter, to share 140 characters of text with a group followers via the web or SMS. This single feature in isolation is admitedly unimpressive and fails to explain the spike in excitement users often experience with Twitter.
What has kept me hooked on Twitter over time is not the tool itself but the ecosystem of applications that others have developed around Twitter’s central text-sharing functionality. It is for this reason that Twitter in particular might have a “life cycle” and thus, might take a bit to appreciate, understand and then integrate into one’s routine, let alone one’s lesson plans. Upon discovering how others have reconfigured, parsed and aggregated Twitter’s data into something useful, one begins to understand Twitter as simply a means of gathering data and every other tool built around Twitter as the real substance that will make its way into classrooms. The following 3-minute ROCKETBOOM video does good job of explaining how this data creates a so-called “Twitter Global Mind”.
Since my lofty first goal attempted, I wish to now list 10 of the most useful Twitter applications I’ve found lately for expanding my global mind and ones I plan to use soon in my Spanish classes. When they’ve been available and relative, I’ve also included short videos explaining each tool. What are your favorite Twitter applications? How do you use or plan to use them in your classroom? Please let us know by commenting on this post or tweet it to me.
1. Tweetmic allows one to record audio on the iPhone and then publish it directly to Twitter. Since I have an iPhone it seems like a quick way for me to send messages to my students from wherever I happen to be. I understand that not everyone has an iPhone and this is the only one I have included, but I think it demonstrates how this technology is becoming ever more ubiquitous. If you don’t have an iPhone, I recommend you keep an eye on Seesmic. The company has developed a client for Twitter that will allow you tweet from your desktop, share pictures and links, or use a web cam to share video comments.
2. ScreenJelly consitutes a tool for narrating anything on your computer screen for up to three minutes and then sharing a link to that screencast via Twitter. There is no software to install, so it makes a great cross-platform tool for students to share their thoughts, photos, videos or stories in the target language quickly and simply.
3. TweetBoard turns Twitter into a discussion board that lives on top of your current website. You have to watch the video to fully appreciate this one.
4. TwitterVision has been around almost as long as Twitter itself and is a “old” favorite that let’s you watch the public timeline of Twitter on a Google map and easily filter tweets by language. I think this tool, if nothing else, certainly can give students a sense of global awareness.
5. TwitterLocal is an Adobe Air application that allows you to easily search and follow tweets from multiple locations at the same time. I would say this is a must-have applicaition for educators of anything international.
6. Crowdstatus allows one to create a page with the latest updates of a particular set of Twitter users. If you want to use this in a class, Crowdstatus might be a great way of letting all participants know who is taking part in the project and what has been their most recent contribution.
7. Phweet lets one use Twitter to talk to any other Twitter user using your computer or mobile phone. The site’s blog describes the service best: “a Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. Let your friends know you are talking. Invite them to join in. No numbers, no new profiles. Simple, just start Phweet talking!” Phweet seems to have the potential to fundamentally change the way we communicate online with students and colleagues. This one could be a very big deal.
8. TweetCube gives you the ability to share documents and files via Twitter. Enough said.
9. PollDaddy. Take a poll of your followers, i.e., your students. Let your students poll each other. This tool could help jumpstart a discussion on a topic.
10. TwitterFeed allows you to put any RSS feed into your Twitter account. With TwitterFeed the kinds of information you can send to your students and they can send to each other are endless. Imagine if every course had a constant stream of pertinent information that was always available to students and that came from a variety of people and sources. That’s what Twitter, Twitterfeed and the other nine tools mentioned here allow you to provide your students.
In which 10 Twitter applications might change your global mind and possibly your language classroom by Kevin Gaugler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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