We Are What We Consume? I Hope Not.

Sarah Silverman, Wil Wheaton, the National Parks Service, Patton Oswalt, Jim Gaffigan, Jon Stewart, Dr. Cornel West, Simon Pegg and Elizabeth Warren. These are some of the people I follow on Twitter. I have only tweeted to my friend in England and only then because she is utterly unreachable in most any medium other than Twitter, other than that, radio silence from my end. Tonight, most of my feed right now is centered on Sharknado. Deep, I know.

I haven't used Facebook or Twitter with my students besides in general conversation or telling them to get off Twitter while we're having class. There is no real philosophical reason that I haven't used either one in school. In my previous school, I taught students who were too young to be on the platforms, and at Central, I have some students who don't have smartphones (this year we'll all be on iPads, so that will alleviate most of the accessibility issue). Additionally, I haven't used them in school because Facebook is part of my out-of-school life - a place where I connect with friends around the world; honestly, I like having time and spaces away from school. 

This past spring my students in Feminist Lit were doing presentations in lit circles, and one of my groups read I Am Malala. In response to the reading, our discussions in class, and their relationships with social media, part of their lesson included taking and posting a class photo for the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Some of these organizers were the same young women who told me they couldn't really call themselves feminists because they didn't involve themselves in rallies or make public proclamations. They felt proud and I loved seeing themselves thinking about a more global community and building confidence as activists. 

Potholes? Nothing catastrophic that I can think of now that both are so mainstream, although you may get students whose parents object. I could see falling off as a moderator simply because other things take priority. A lot of my students seem to be real experts in the Twitterverse (Ugh - did I really just use that? I'm so sorry.), so putting them in charge could help me and empower them. 

Possibilities: In perusing articles and classmates' blogs, there are many. It seems like there are a lot of ways we could use Twitter in class conversation where students could link other tweets, visuals, articles, etc. to enrich the dialogue. In terms of simply using the format to help students in their writing, the 140-character format can help students to tighten up their ideas, summarize an idea/character/etc, and Twitter or Facebook certainly could be used in character development and story telling.... 

Resource:

I really like the idea of #edchat but wasn't sure I understood how it really worked even after reading the NY Times article, so I found an article by one of the founders that talks specifics about how it works. It's a massive network!

http://blog.web20classroom.org/2012/03/brief-history-of-edchat.html