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Sunday, 21 February 2016

SNS for Teachers Autonomy

When we talk about SNS what will you think about? Your daily life sharing? Entertainment gossip news? Yeah, these are the basic functions of SNS, which helps people to establish links between each other. In this information age, the internet provides a platform for each individual to share their life and opinions, but have you ever thought about to use SNS to share your ideas about English teaching or get some ideas from it? 

Advantages


I never thought about this from teaching perspective before as well, but as an English learner (until now :p), I always try to find something that can help me learn English from SNS. However, I want to say that Twitter is really a good recourse for English teacher. Since everyone can establish an account for twitter, it is possible to find a lot of famous English teaching researchers or teaching organisations on this platform. Because people are linked via internet, you can find some other useful sources or people by searching the following and followers, and you can follow them as well. At the same time Twitter will recommend somebody you might interested in to you. So there are plenty of resources on ELT.



The second function I prefer is the #Hashtag. You can find different Hashtags by searching. What are the functions of Hashtags? You can post a tweet with Hashtag, and the other people who follow this topic as well, will find your tweet, and they could give comments to it, and you can have a discussion together via that. Similarly, you may also find others twitter under one Hashtag, so you can actively have a discussion with these users as well. Here is a very useful Hashtag I’d love to recommend to you, #ELTchat. Every Wednesday, there will be some topics to be discussed, and ELT teachers from different countries will discuss together, so I believe you will get some brilliant ideas from there on your teaching process.



However…

There are some limitations that cannot be ignored. Firstly, about the privacy problem. Some people (for example your students, if you don’t hope they find your ‘secrets’) may get access to your profile, or your photos, so your personal information may be watched by others. Moreover, some people may have different images when they are holding the ‘teacher’ identity, so once Twitter leaks different images to their students, such as your drunk photo, it may be difficult to keep a respective image to the students. Thus, if it is possible, create a new account for teaching purposes, and check your followers regularly, if you find someone you don’t like, you can block them.

Secondly, you can only put 140 characters in one tweet. I think it is too limited to express one’s opinion. But you can type all the things you want to say first, and then screenshot, so you can share your words by image. But still not so convenient.

Finally, the most significant shortage is that it cannot be accessed in China. Although there are many ideas and resources on Twitter, for the policy issues, Twitter cannot be linked in China. Fortunately, there is something similar in China, Weibo (微博, the direct translation of microblog). This SNS is really popular in China today.

Weibo

Compared with Twitter, it also limits the word for each post. In here, the users can type 140 words in Chinese characters. Due to the features of Mandarin that 140 Chinese characters could transmit more information than 140 English characters, one post of Weibo can cover more information. Additionally, Weibo has the function to post “Top Article”, which allows users to post a passage on it, like a blog. So Weibo can help teachers share their ideas more directly and easily on Weibo. Of course only the title and the starters of these articles can be seen while followers scanning, so it won’t cause time consuming.

This social communication tool has a topic discussion area, similar with the Hashtag in Twitter. People can discuss there, and the host could select some cool review and post them at the top of this discussion area.

These are my ideas about Weibo using on teacher autonomy, however, the resources on English language teaching are very limited, and most of that is for learners rather than teachers. Some of famous English teachers in China post a lot of things about their working life, but the thought about teaching methods or skills are very rare. I really hope the teachers in China can utilise this platform to improve our teaching methods and share valuable resources. I find one account on the web related to the teaching method. It regularly holds some discussions in Chinese, if you are interested in you can follow it as well.







SNS in China is gradually become significant for daily life, and if we could make it work for our teaching purpose, I think the efficiency will be improved a lot.

1 comment:

  1. Hello,
    after reading your posts, I can realise the needs of SNS in China nowadays.
    just in case for the understanding from readers, I would recommend mentioning the full name of the abbreviation.
    Also, will there be any potential for Weibo to expand its market outside the Asian markets? I think it would be a great investigation.

    ReplyDelete