I’ve always tried to infuse social media into all of my classes — especially the traditional core curriculum classes. This interest became more formal quest since I became a Research Fellow for the Society of New Communications Research, where I sit on the educational committee.
So you can only imagine how pleased I was to see this blog post on the “official AEJMC blog”, and a more in-depth piece by David Parry at the University of Texas at Dallas. There is even an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education!
Teaching twitter and teaching through tweets is legit!
David does the same assignment both Karen Miller Russell & I (and many others!) have done: Twitter tweets for 2 days. My experience is that when you throw students into Twitter together as a group, where as a part of the assignment they are required to follow one another, it is an instant community for them that really helps show what the tool is all about.
He makes some other great suggestions for how to use Twitter in teaching to expand the classroom experience, so do check out his longer blog post on the topic.
Lest you think I’ve lost sight of what is really important in education, let me be clear:
The point is that it shouldn’t be about teaching a specific technology — it should be about showcasing creative professional uses through emergent technology. Today Twitter, tomorrow …. what ??? As Karen said when I popped by her office last week, we’re here today to show them how to use the killer app now, but we won’t be there for the next big thing — so we have to teach the skills to them so they can teach themselves. In doing so, we lay the groundwork for creative but ethical practice using tools as they emerge.
Other resources:
- Social Media class twitter tweets for 2 days assignment
- Karen Miller Russell’s 48 hours of Twitter
- Karen’s suggestions for PR student tweets
- Web 2.0 teaching tools: Twitter tweets for higher education
- Collaborative writing, 140 characters at a time
[...] teaching tweets The point is that it shouldn’t be about teaching a specific technology — it should be about showcasing creative professional uses through emergent technology. Today Twitter, tomorrow …. what ??? As Karen said when I popped by her office … [...]
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