Twitterbean Rationale

c.f. Aja's Blog:

Twitter provides English language learners a means of connecting with native speakers, encountering authentic input while restricting usage to 140 characters or less. The strict limits force students to critically use vocabulary and abbreviations that mirror native speakers' usage. This project will just be one means of using twitter in the classroom as students will have experience using twitter to follow a celebrity or cause, communicating with classmates and posting reactions to readings and discussions. Using twitter as a form of data collection and reporting will: focus students on collecting specific pieces of data in accordance with the character limit, allow for numerous entries, while saving the data and making it open for public view. Below are instructions for using twitter in the context of students' politeness measuring project.