Twitter chats

I had heard about Twitter years ago back in China, but since it is blocked in my home country, I never had an account. Shortly after I arrived in the United States, I created an account on Twitter. I posted two very simple tweets about homesick or something and then I stopped tweeting. The problem was that I didn't know whom to follow! Twitter is a highly contextualized environment with a high sense of identity and community. People tend to find their comfort zones, especially in a strange environment. As the speech on TED about Global Voice we have watched the other day shows, different ethnicity forms different community even on an open forum online, like Twitter. Since Twitter is blocked in China, I have very few friends who would use Twitter. Therefore, I couldn't find my own “community” on Twitter, so I stopped using it after a few days. Why wouldn't I follow whoever on Twitter to fit into the new community? I believe it would be a great idea to make new friends from other communities, but, as we all know, stepping out of the comfort zone is the hardest thing.

This week, our task for LAI 590 is to explore Twitter and how it can be used in language education. I revisited my Twitter account. This time, I had a clear goal: follow some educators on Twitter, learn from them about how to use Twitter and see what I can do with it. I participated in the Twitter chats #langchat. I typed in the #langchat in the search bubble and saw a stream of all tweeters’ feeds who had included #langchat in their feeds. I found some interesting tweets, such as foreign languages learning, teaching techniques and classroom sharing. I picked up some tweeters I liked and followed them. Now I am following almost 60 tweeters. Suddenly, my twitter account was alive! By following these people who share similar interests and pursuits with me, I have my new community. I posted a comment and a question with #langchat. Although no one has responded to me yet, I have three followers from the educators I have followed. I like it here.