Comparison of Twitter and Pownce

With respect to ease of learning how the site works, Twitter is simpler than Pownce since basically we just write what we are doing within 140 letters and post it. In addition, personally, I think the use of Twitter is more suitable for students in elemental levels because I find that Twitter makes me feel like writing anything. It may be because what I can write is very limited, which might bring me a casual attitude. Then I can write even trivial things, such as “I’m having coffee,” and “I have just finished my dinner.” Taking this into consideration, the use of Twitter can raise my future students’ motivation to write something in English more than the use of Pownce can do because they can write any small things.
However, in terms of what we can post and how we can control who sees our posts, Pownce has more option of kinds of posts and privacy control. First of all, regarding types of information we can share, we can post messages, links, files, and event information. Each type of thing we can post has their own icon, so it is easy to see how to post different types of things. When I posted the information about an event, I just put necessary information about what, where, and when without any confusion because there were sections for such information.
The other aspect of Pownce is that we can control our privacy better. Unlike Twitter, there is a page about privacy setting to set up “who” can access “what.” Therefore, we can put more strict control if we use it one of the class assignments; it is possible to have Pownce for a specific class.
Considering the advantages of Pownce, I think it is a good idea to implement it in higher intermediate and advanced classes because students who are in such levels can write more sentences, their opinions, and find more resources and share them.

Micro-blogging in education

I agree with Seth who says in his blog (DigitaLang) that Twitter givevs students more freedom to practice English because students can use what they have learned in class in their lives. Of course, a teacher in Japan needs to have a discussion why students are supposed to post what they are doing in English instead of Japanese, but after a teacher and students agree to do so in English, using Twitter will bring great benefits to students. One of the issues learning English in Japan is lack of opportunity to use it. But using Twitter is going to be one of the solutions for the issue. Because students are not required to write a long paragraph or complicated essays, they may feel much comfortable to use English. I believe even students in an elementary level can practice English. For example, if students learn a verb "drink," they can use it for describing what they are drinking. If they don't know an English word for what they are drinking, they will look up the word in a dictionary. As a consequence, they will learn not only how to use "drink", but also how to say objects in English. I would say Twitter will be a great place for review class. In addition, we can see a posibility for them to be autonomous learners.



Twitter for Academia told me one of the useful tools of Twitter, which is "track". With Twitter, we can track a word to see how the word is used in different situations. For language teaching and learning, authenticity is a critical factor. Learning language will be limited if it occurs only in class and if it doesn't have any connection with the real world. However, if students learn how the language is used, their learning will be more meaningful for them and it will be more effective. I would like to try to have students analyze the use of words to be learned in the future.