Wednesday 7 January 2015

Using Twitter to Teach Editing



I recently found a fantastic example of how students can practice editing skills by correcting the tweets of famous athletes.  The original post can be found here.

(Image credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272887/Elementary-students-lesson-English-correcting-NFL-player-tweets-grammar.html).

The idea is fairly straightforward, but I think that this is an effective approach on many levels.  First of all, it gives a real-world context for editing- no worksheets here!  Secondly, by choosing celebrities that kids are interested in (I imagine that Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian would provide some good content for this assignment), you are building in engagement.  Finally, there is an element of digital citizenship to address.  Showing kids that these mistakes are out there for the world to see and judge can be applied to their own use of social media- think before you post!

Food for Thought... What do you think about this approach to editing? If you are a teacher, would you use this idea in your classroom? If you are not a teacher, what do you think about this approach to editing? How important is it to teach digital citizenship in our schools?

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