microblogging

http://academhack.outsidethetext.com/home/2008/twitter-for-academia/
While I was exploring possible educational usages of Twitter, I found another microblogging tool, edumodo, which was established with educational purpose at the very beginning. On this post, Ways to use Twitter in academia were suggested to readers: 1)Class chatter 2)Classroom Community 3)Get a sense of the world 4)Track a word 5)Track a conference 6)Instant feedback 7)Follow a professional 8)Follow a famous person 9)Grammar 10)Rule based writing 11)Maximizing the teachable moment 12)Public notepad 13)Writing assignments. No.9 and 10 are innovative to me. Daily language use is notoriously lack of grammar accuration. However, the writer treats the inconsistant usage or abuse of grammar as a chance for students to aware and learn the rule of language underlining conversation: without rules/structures, say punctuation, language can be vague and not understandable. Those hindering rules can also be productive if you can take advantage by manipulating rules that you want your students to follow. No.4 is also interesting to me. Simply by tracking a word, you can build your own corpus lively seeing how other people in this world are using the language.