Teacher Twitter

Schoolchildren in Brazil are taking a new approach to learning English... through correcting celebrities' spelling and grammar on Twitter.

There's something ironic about an eight-year-old, non-native English speaker politely pointing out that boy wizard actor Daniel Radcliffe can't spell or string a sentence together properly. Case in point: In response to Radcliffe's tweet: "Hello guys ,It have been an age that I didn't tweet , thanks all for your amaizing messages .DAN XX [sic]", a sharp Brazilian boy replied: "@DanielRadcliffe Dear Harry Potter, I'm Gabriel, from Brazil. Your tweet has 2 mistakes: 'it has been' and 'amazing'." Included is a picture of the smiling boy.

In an explanatory video, Andrea Baena, co-ordinator for the University of Cambridge examinations in Brazil, explains that, due to its immediate nature, Twitter users tend to be more concerned about the message than their grammar and spelling. She notes the influence celebrities have on young people, who believe that, because X and Y celebrities are idols of theirs, they must be correct in their language usage.

Which led to the creation of the Celeb Grammar Cops initiative at Red Balloon, an English school for kids in Brazil. Eight- to 13-year-olds were asked to check celebrities' tweets. In all their replies, the children first introduce themselves, mention they're fans, and then point out the errors and offer suggestions to correct them.

Not many celebs have escaped their watchful eyes; Sly Stallone, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian, among many others, have all been called out on their sloppiness.

The face of education is undergoing an exciting transformation. I couldn't help but notice that each child at Red Balloon was using an Apple Mac in class, or that the children discussed the incorrect tweets, and the correct grammar and spelling, before collectively deciding on a solution and helping each other formulate the replies.

The days of a teacher standing in front of a class and educating in a one-to-many fashion are becoming old hat. Today, children - who are practically born technologically minded - seem to thrive in collaborative, group-learning situations, where they can brainstorm among themselves under the guidance of a teacher and with the assistance of technology. Life skills education no longer seems to be about 'how to budget and save', but rather about 'how to use Google to find money-saving ideas'.

There are many ways Twitter, in particular, can be applied in an educational setting to encourage engagement and interaction with learners. Creating a community of like-minded individuals with the same goals could facilitate idea sharing, knowledge gathering and more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. It also extends the classroom beyond the four walls, taking learning into living rooms and making education a 24-hour experience, rather than an eight-hour-day structured method that doesn't necessarily work for all learners, their abilities and their resources. No two children learn the same, and children of the same age may be at completely different levels in their educational development. Twitter allows teachers to tailor their educational content to suit not only an entire classroom, but also individual learners with unique needs.

For example, a teacher could initiate a class discussion on ways to save energy in the home. By extending that conversation to Twitter, it continues past the allotted class slot, allowing learners to share their ideas as they think of them, or as they encounter new ways to save energy.

Furthermore, Twitter opens up a million new resourceful doors, including access to subject matter experts and people knowledgeable on topics students may be researching for assignments. Maths teacher Mr Barton uses Twitter to disseminate useful information and tools to aid learning and understanding of this subject.

Twitter also expands the chalkboard, if you will, allowing teachers to incorporate multimedia into their lessons, such as video and audio content. According to HP, people remember more readily what they see than what they hear, while the recall percentage increases dramatically when visual and oral information are combined.

Children gain a sense of belonging and inclusion in a conversation. I know I write better than I speak, and that I am among the worst public speakers on the planet. I never raised my hand in class, even though I knew some of the answers. I never volunteered to head up group assignments because I knew I was a contributor, not a leader. Had I had the opportunity to engage with my teachers and classmates through a digital medium that removed the awkward face-to-face interactions dreaded by my teenage self, I probably would have put up my virtual hand to offer my thoughts on particular topics.

Teaching doesn't end in the classroom. It continues into the home and the community, it grows in conversations between friends, and manifests through children's own world experiences. Students who can access their teachers any time, anywhere, have the advantage of getting answers to questions they don't understand, or clarifying confusing points, and of sharing this information with their peers, some of whom might have been too shy to ask those same questions. Perhaps there wasn't enough time to ask those questions in class, or perhaps, like me, they were too shy to ask what they thought were 'stupid' questions.

The reality is that, in the digital age, learning cannot, and should not, be confined to the classroom. Children should be encouraged to exploit the tools available to them to enhance and supplement their education. And if this means learning from celebrities' mistakes on Twitter, then so be it.