You're No One If You're Not On Twitter
I’ll be presenting a paper on teaching with Twitter at 4Cs next year, so, in order to get my “data,” this Monday I will present my students with their task of creating accounts on the popular microblogging site.
I was nervous over the summer when the Fail Whale kept rearing his power-blue head, but it seems like things have stabilized since then. As my previous post indicated, though, I am hesitant to require students to visit sites outside of the already confusing course management software, but because the writing shared on Twitter comes in spurts of 140 characters or less, I think it is a great opportunity to experiment and meet my students where they are in terms of technology use—relying heavily upon text messaging and social networking sites. Ideally, my rationale for this project [which will be their final exam] is that asking students to post to their own timeline will teach them valuable lessons in audience, linking, community, and active reading. At the end of the semester, they will have to rely and reflect upon their short posts in order to compose a technology literacy autobiography. Hopefully they will see from their timestamped posts that they’ve evolved as producers and consumers over the semester, that their life on the screen is not necessarily an alternative life but a space for growth.
Now to put that into directions that are easy to understand…perhaps this video will help? 
2 Comments
i think twitter is just like the facebook status update, what do you think?
[...] Twitter [again]–I established a separate account for teaching. As I mentioned a month or so ago, I’ll be presenting a paper on teaching with Twitter at 4Cs this March. So far, I’m not requiring students to follow people or build a community outside of our class, which is what I find most appealing in my own Twitter use. But I have asked them to maintain their Twitterstream as an informal, public journal focused on documenting their semester-long experiences with technology and literacy, both in my class and others. I’ve been learning a lot from my students, especially how attached they are to their laptops, as well as their lives as freshman. I know more now about what other required classes they’re taking and frequently hear them talk about going home on the weekends, which is nothing like my college experience [I lived at home all 4 years, in New Orleans mind you, so who wanted to leave that?!] I can’t wait to read more over the next month–While it was clear students were struggling to learn the course management software in September, I think this push to be critical of their web use is something they’ll take with them the rest of their 4 years here. [...]