They have to paste their reply and the tweet’s URL in a Google Document hyperlinked to from the University’s CMS. The first activity was to have students reply to a tweet from the chosen hashtag list of tweets (in this case #educationnationale).
These satirical or cynical elements do not change the students into subversive, potentially offensive, lop-sided intransigents, but rather allow them another point of entry into the sometimes complex material made unpenetrable by the forced aura of positivity needed to push a point for a reform across. There is a very practical point to having satirical material in amongst the best efforts of the ruling party to justify their stance and actions. “The 8 reforms of National Education to promote equlity and reinforce the sense of citizenship”Īmongst the tweets I had mostly collated myself for the given hashtag were some cynical takes on recent reforms of the end-of-year report that avoided stigmatising students by note giving them actual grades instead colours are given to soften the blow. “Les 8 mesures de l’ # education pour faire vivre l’égalité et renforcer la citoyenneté” In the context of the activity I gave my students today, Twitter provided an alternative to French government websites about education, where clearly it is in the interest of the government to portray their numerous reforms in a good light, i.e. Twitter is now the intermediary between the searchable online newspaper, with any political slant it may adopt or prefer, and a ‘Google’ search, which reveals the most popular first, and perhaps also those most willing to spend for their search engine optimization. The above Tweet epitomizes why I didn’t follow through with the application at first (for the last 10 years), though now, come to think of it, that might be a very good basis for a more basic language activity, or even one that tried to find idiomatic and familiar collocations in a target language. “where can i get one of those kim kardashian or paris hilton jobs where they just kind of pay you to exist” This was of course a stereotype that hid the truth about the potential for streaming hyperlinks on sujects chosen specifically. Twitter was off-putting because of its reputation for duplicating celebrities’ ergonomics, physical movement, diet and joy without an analytical filter. Twitter is catchy and having ignored it for most of the past few years, I now find it an irresistible alternative that sits somewhere between a serious endeavour and passive moment.