Twitter Chats!

Although unfamiliar to twitter before this activity, I found the twitter chat to be easier than I thought it would be. I was nervous to be a part of the chat all week because I was so unfamiliar with twitter. Where do I sign up? How do I post? How do I hashtag? It all came into focus while actually doing it! I was really pleased that it wasn't as hard as expected.
The chat that I followed was #langchat. This group chat is mostly comprised of language teachers that discuss language issues. The issue of the night was Learning vs Acquisition and how it impacts our teaching. While I am not currently a teacher, I do have some strong feelings about this topic which made it easier to blend in. It was really fun to me to see that people were responding to what I had to say as well as appreciating my words. I loved getting retweeted and favorited! It was mostly concerning how we stray away from straight learning in the classroom and bring students closer to a native level status. This to me speaks highly about pragmatics and ensuring that we bring in outside materials to ensure that our students are learning from as many "natural sources" as possible.
I definitely liked the twitter chats. I found them to be really interesting as well as full of potential ideas and debates. I think at any given time if the topic is right I would love to join in and learn some new information. This I could definitly see myself learning as it is important to form a community of learners.
As per twitter itself, I still am really confused by the site itself. I don't really know its potential at this point having only been a member for a few days. I have a lot of learning to do and information to gather but I think it would give me ideas as a teacher and help me to stay current. I don't think this will be my main fountain of information as a teacher and a learning but I could see myself using it for the chats or just to look at news and ideas.
Thanks for listening!

ePals

WOW! I cannot even begin to fathom how useful this site could be in my future. ePals is a global website which focuses on language learning through sharing ideas and even classrooms. You can link up with another classroom and have students collaborate and correspond through email! This site is incredible. I wish I would have had an opportunity like this while learning Spanish. Even though I'm in the ESOL field, I'm still not sure what my future holds or which subject area I'll be teaching. If I do end up as a Spanish teacher, I would love to use this in my classroom. Being from a small town, I never got the opportunity to converse with native speakers of Spanish and i'm sure a lot of Spanish native speakers would say the same. Not only is this real life practice of conversing with natives, but also boosts cultural learning in the classroom. This corresponds with the LOTE Standards 1& 2 and would be really helpful to students to actively engage in learning. As per the ESOL benefits of this website, there are numerous. One of my favorites is the in2books feature, ESOL students are able to gain literacy skills by linking up with an eMentor in which they can share important ideas about what they have read. This is a great learning tool in which students can use their English skills to interpret their reading and be able to receive meaningful feedback in order to reflect and get better at their skills. This corresponds to the NYS ESOL Standards 1, 2, and 3. This website has great tools available for language teachers as well as students and I can't wait to use this in my future classroom.