Tweeting, Tweet Mining, and Peer Twevision

Image via Jijo Sunny

1. Tweet per page
I presented a page from America (with vocabulary preview), along with this tweet:

Escribe un tuit para página 8 y otro para página 9 en la voz de #América #srasxtn #Esp2
— Laura Sexton (@SraSxtn) February 24, 2012

We discussed (IN SPANISH!!) the main problems America was dealing with, and students summarized in a tweet with the #srasxtn hashtag how they, as America, were feeling and why. Would you believe that translator generated responses were virtually nil—despite all of that tempting authorized computer/smartphone access? And would you believe that, though students could see each other’s responses, there was NO copying? And once we shifted to replying to the tweet instead of hashtags to sort responses, nearly 100% turn-in rate.

2. Tweet mining
I assigned Spanish II to pick an “-ing” word and search Twitter for it, then choose a tweet they could understand that also used a form of estar. They then just copy and pasted it in a reply to an Edmodo post–but they could not repeat the same “-ing” word as any other classmate. Then I took the list and made a worksheet to breakdown the “wild” authentic examples: it even made the native speakers think!

3. Tweet your poll results
After being presented with an article on what people like and don’t like on Twitter (Kristy Placido, you rule!), the students formed questions to ask classmates about what they thought they might like and dislike, and then did the classic survey-each-other-thing. THEN students had to take that information, summarize it, and tweet it with the #srasxtn hashtag (in retrospect, I need to have a different one for each class). This way, students learned more than just me gusta, but le gusta, les gusta, and nos gusta.

4. Peer twevision
I wanted Spanish I to see each other’s results, but also respond to some of the recurring problems in their tweets. Plus my ninth graders were less accustomed to tweetery, so I thought I’d give them another chance to submit tweets so I could find them (with hashtags). So every student retweeted 5 classmates’ tweets that were correct (because there were only 5 right originally) and replied to 5 classmates’ tweets with corrected sentences. Afterward, pretty much every student knew how to use a hashtag, how to retweet, and how to reply.