Texts and Tweets

I’ve never used Twitter. I dislike texting. Yet, the thought of using them in a classroom thrills me. Allow me to clarify. I know about Twitter (140 characters or less, sent as an update to a blog or profile, etc.) and I do actually text message – I’d just prefer to call. I hate having entire conversations over text. However, I see both of these technologies as wonderful opportunities to teach composition. Not only are students familiar with and using both (more so texts than tweets), but they can provide many strong lesson plans that focus on important aspects of the writing process.

Text messages get a bad rap. The media seems to have it out for them: every couple months I see an article or hear a news byte about how text messaging is destroying the youth’s grammar and mechanics. Anchors quote grumpy old retiring English profs about their opinion and get, inevitably, the same answer every time: kids don’t know squat. Well, guess what: curmudgeons have been saying that since time began – it is old folks’ right to complain, but that doesn’t mean they’re right, even if they are English teachers.

I read an interesting article in a recent issue of American Speech by Sali Tagliamonte and Derek Denis (two sociolinguists from U of Toronto) that contradicts the popular notion that text messaging, instant messaging, and all other SMS (synchronous messaging services) ruin the ability to write. You can find information on the article here:

http://americanspeech.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/short/83/1/3

The gist of it is that texting actually helps strengthen stylistic fluency and that there is nothing to fear. Fancy that. Hence, I intend to exercise the power of texting in class. While the lesson plan is still fluid, I will break my students into small groups and give each one a different passage from an essay in their reader, something short but potent. The groups will translate their passage into a text message and send it over to another group. After each group has received another group’s text-encrypted passage, they will have to translate the passage back into prose. I’ve no idea what to expect; my instincts tell me they will do a better job than the media might give them credit for.

Twitter, while untested (by me – I know a lot of TechRhet listserv folks use it pedagogically), has great potential to stress the need for conciseness. Some great lesson plans can be found in a limitation of 140 characters: the elimination of wordiness, the affordances in writing as well as the constraints. Students would try to write something (jury is out on what I’d have them write specifically) using Twitter restrictions. Now, I doubt I’d have them actually do either exercise on cell phones; it would be too distracting and logistically complicated (I wouldn’t force them to give other students their numbers). But by using the templates of each, it could provide interesting results. Below is a bit by the folks at Penny Arcade (my favorite web comic) on Twitter. Warning: Some NSFW language (in writing).

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/