Speaking by writing, that is what people do in
social media. Nowadays, the people use social media in their daily activities to
express and share their idea and opinion in social media, includes its usage in
education. In education, especially for the students of all age groups, social
media offers countless learning opportunities through interactive ways. This
Internet exploration often leads them to new findings and many-a-time they make
scores of new friends and allies. Let’s mention Twitter, one of the most
popular social media that people usually use. Utilization of Twitter in
education is a new. In language perspective, Twittering could improve students’ writing skill.
According to TechTerm.com, Twitter
is an online service that allows you to share updates with other users by
answering one simple question: "What are you doing?”. For
the earlier time, people who use Twitter are usually online marketers. They use
Twitter for raising the traffic of website visit by posting the URL (Uniform Resource
Locator) address of their website, then promote it to the internet users so
they could click the URL. If we see the Twitter usage nowadays, where the
people use it for following the trending topics, accessing information about artists,
sharing creativity, utilization of Twitter in education is a new by the users.
Twitter is the simples’ media that
allows students to tell their opinion related to the topic. By using twitter,
students can follow their friends and discuss their lesson without face to
face. Then, the huge benefit is that they can follow other friends from other
country and make a discussion with a new topic, new knowledge and new culture
that they can share. Twitter utilization in education, especially in English
subject is very useful for both the teacher and students. Students who want to
share or tweet something usually use their own language or international
language. Indirectly, whether it is conscious or unconscious, Twitter can be a
tool for improving students’ writing skills.
Based on
paper of eLearning and Software for Education, people use Twitter to
communicate, to ask questions, to ask for directions, support, advice, and to
validate open-ended interpretations or ideas by discussing with the others.
Being limited to just 140 characters really focuses the attention; it's
developed its own sort of discursive grammar set, requiring a great deal of
summarizing. It’s clear why Twitter utilization in education could improve
students’ writing skill.
The
benefits from using Twitter by Exploring collaborative writing, it could promote
writing as a fun activity, fosters editing skills, and develop literacy skills.
It can give our students chance to record their cognitive trails and then use
them to reflect on their work. Using a social media could be one example of
collaborative learning. According to Felder & Brent (1994), Collaborative learning
is a subset
of active learning in which students interact with one another while they learn and apply course material.
The
benefit of collaborative learning are builds self-esteem in students (Johnson
& Johnson 1989), enhance student satisfaction with the learning experience
and promotes a postive attitude toward the subject matter. Collaborative efforts among students result in a
higher degree of accomplishment by all participants as opposed to individual,
competitive systems in which many students are left behind (Slavin 1967). Collaborative
Learning is especially useful in Foreign Language and ESL courses where
interactions involving use of the language through speaking are important.
We think that Twittering is one of the interesting ways
for students to learn something new by tweet their opinion or review after the
class. With the limits character in twitter, they could be more focused on
their word and grammar. The last is they can get feedback from their friend or
their followers toward their writing to improve their writing skills.
Abdul Majid Robiansyah
Dwi Novita Sari
Section D 2011
