“Tweeting?”, I asked.

“Yes! Yes!” Patrizia* responded. “She showed me how she has to type in… Oh, what is it? a 100 letters? Oh, I don’t remember, … and then the other person sends back a message… just like with the sms – only now she’s chatting with a girl in England! “ 

Patrizia, one of my business English clients, was keen to know about Twitter.  Her 15 year-old daughter, who is studying English in an Italian school, was using it to “tweet” with others - in English!

Patrizia was delighted that her daughter felt confident enough in English to try to carry on a conversation with a native English speaker. Now Patrizia wanted to learn how to use social media, too.

The personal and professional world we live in is increasingly using the social media to network with people around the world. Nevertheless, some of my students were familiar with these new media, many had only heard of them,  and most did not use them.

However, their children were using them – and these parents wanted to know more: they wanted to know what their children were getting into. Using social media became a hot topic for discussion. But to fully understand social media and to use the new CMC (computer-media-communications) lingo, there is nothing like actually rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty….

So, I suggested that it might be a good exercise to use these new media as tools in learning English. For example, why not create a blog which we could use for their writing exercises? This idea went down like a cold shower on a cold morning. 

My clients/students’ coolness towards these new means reflected a number of causes: some felt that their English language skills weren’t adequate enough to write comments on other people’s blog, let alone write a post themselves. Others had heard of local negative news coverage of Facebook which left them feeling very leery of getting involved. For others, Twitter was an unknown entity and its 140 character count too limiting for their vocabulary and grammar capabilities. A few had commented a few times on blogs in their own language but had been ignored by the blog writer and other readers. In general, they felt ill-at-ease with these new media and how to communicate with them.

So I came up with the idea of “E-notebooks” for each student.

An “E-notebook” is a joint electronic website where students can keep and monitor their English language learning efforts:  written work, as well as audio and video recordings. It is a joint electronic website because both I, as their instructor, and they, as the learners, have full access to their individual sites.  It is a site that they can access either in class or from their own computers. 

Here is an “E-notebook” from one of my Giovanni students. He has given me permission to show it to you. Take a look at it. It is a tool where teacher and student can note areas to work on, as well as improvements. How do you think he handled his qualms about writing a post?

In another post, I’ll describe to you how I set up the E-notebooks for each student and how we use them in an ESL/EFL/ESOL lesson plan.

But for now: How do you feel about using social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc.? Do you think that it is important for parents to be familiar with exactly how the new social media function in order to be aware of what their children could be getting involved with? If you use social media, which ones do you use and how has they enriched your life?

Till the next post, enjoy using social media in ESL/EFL/ESOL lessons,

Eileen

*not her real name