Quick Twitter Video Activity

Educators seem to be constantly searching for new activities and ways to use Twitter with their Students. At the same time developers seem to be constantly looking for ways to build on the success of Twitter and develop apps and sites that will extend its functionality and increase its usefulness and usability.

Chitter.TV is one of those sites. It allows you to visit various live TV channels from a range of sources, see what people are saying about them on Twitter and add your own comments.

To add your comments you'll need to be logged in to your Twitter account, but once you are it's just a simple case of watching what is happening on the channels you are interested in and then writing your comment underneath and posting it directly to Twitter.


Chitter.TV has quite a range of channels to choose from and they are not all English language ones. They vary from news channels to MTV and light entertainment channels all the way through to kids channels.


Here's how you could use Chitter.TV with your students

• Send your students Chitter.TV get them registered and then ask them to go to the Sky News channel at: http://chitter.tv/index.php#skynews
• They will see a brief news summary of the main news stories of the moment. Ask them to watch the clip (it's about 2 - 3 mins long) and post headlines for each news story in the clip and / or key facts to their Twitter stream.
• They'll be able to watch the news clip a few times as it loops, so this should give them some useful listening and summarising practice.
  
• You could even get them to write complete sentences from the news clip, like a dictation.
• You could get them to comment on or describe what they have watched.
• You could get them to tweet about which of the news headlines they felt was most important or which was most relevant to them.
• You'll then be able to check out what they have written in their Twitter stream and correct or comment.
  

I think something like this would work well as a homework / self access task rather than a classroom task, but I guess you have to decide that for yourself.

I hope you enjoy this and do post a comment if you think of other ways to use Chitter.TV with your students.

• Here you can find 25 more video related activities for EFL and ESL learners.

Related links:

• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Animated Music Videos for EFL
• Creating multimedia stories
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Tutorial: Using Videos from YouTube
• Great Video Commenting Tool

Best

Nik Peachey

Translate Shakespeare 2 Text Lingo 4 Twitter??

If like me you struggle with text and SMS or even Twitter lingo then transL8it will surely be a handy tool for you.

Simply type the text you want to translate into the field and then click on translate it. Your text will then appear translated in the filed next to it.

Or should I say?

Simply typ d txt U wnt 2 transl8 in2 d feLd & thN clik on transl8 it. yor txt wiL thN apEr transL8d n d filed NXT 2 it.


The translation works both ways so you can also feed in text messages and then translate them back to 'standard' English.

I couldn't resist trying this out with some Shakespeare so I took a short snippet of text from Tamming of the Shrew and translated it to text lingo

• Here's what I put in:
  
  See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,
  Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow
  Never to woo her no more, but do forswear her,
  As one unworthy all the former favours
  That I have fondly flatter'd her withal.

• And this is what I got:
  
  c, how dey :-* & court! Signior Lucentio,
  hEr iz my h&, & hEr I firmly vow
  nevr 2 woo her n mo, bt do forswear her,
  az 1 unworthy aL d formR favRz
  dat I hav fondly flatterd her withal.

I think this is a great tool to use with students to make short texts or dialogue a bit more interesting.

• You could have them try to figure out the code and rules of translation being applied, then translate some of their own statements.
• You could prepare some of your own lingo texts for students to translate back.
• You could translate headlines from the news.
• You could Tweet them text using Twitter and get them to translate and Tweet you back

This is a fun tool that you can use so easily in so many ways to make dealing with text a bit more entertaining and engaging for students.

I hope you enjoy it.

• Find more text related activities for EFL ESL students

Related links:

• Revising Short Texts and Syntax on IWB
• Prompting reading speeds
• Comparing Texts to Aid Noticing
• Write Your Own Quick Biography
• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Drama project tools

Best

Nik Peachey