Using Twitter in the Classroom: 5 Steps to Get the Most Out of Your Twitter Experience

I assign Twitter in my classes, and I struggle with how to get students to use it.   I wrote the following to help the new user turn a basic social media interface into a robust tool for Purpose Centered Education. 

How to Get the Most out of Your Twitter Account and Assignment
 

So you’ve created an account, followed your professor and perhaps a few classmates, and maybe even uploaded an image of yourself or one that represents you to your Twitter account. You read and respond to the “Tweets for this Week.” 
 

“Now what?” you ask.  “Twitter isn’t so great.  I don’t get what the big deal is.”  Like many things in life, you will get out of this assignment what you put into it.  Furthermore, the more you use Twitter, the more robust it becomes.  Here are some ways to help make that happen.

1. Follow Interesting People, Important Organizations, & Reputable News Sources

Think of who you follow as a giant dinner party; the conversation at the dinner party will be as interesting as the people you invite.  If you don’t know where to start, follow some of the people your professor follows, or an agency you would love to work for, or a local (or national or international) politician or activist.  

Follow reputable news organizations that post content.  That way when you check your Twitter, you will be exposed to what is going on in the world.  You will start to discover that many use Twitter to post links.  In this way, you can catch up on the news while accomplishing an assignment for class.  This also helps you become more involved in the world around you, which will inevitably help you in your future career and lives as change agents.

2. Retweet & Favorite

When reading your newly robust Twitter feed (thanks to completing #1 above), you will come across Tweets that you think are interesting or funny or important or….  You get the idea.  You can Retweet or Favorite those Tweets.  A “Retweet” puts the Tweet on your feed so that your followers will see it.  A “Favorite” gets a star; I think of that as akin to the “Thumbs Up” on Facebook.  I will often favorite a student Tweet, but I only Retweet those I want my followers to see.  

Remember that your Twitter Feed is a representation of you, and so what you chose to Retweet will, in turn, show the world the issues that are important to you. Because I will look at your content and learn from you, I often Retweet things you have Tweeted.  In this way, we share sharing information, and that can become infectious.  In a good way. How you decide to use the two is up to you, but remember Retweeting adds content to your Twitter Feed.  

3. # versus @

Getting down the differences between # and @ will help you Tweet like a pro.  You may have seen some Tweets that look like Newspeak from George Orwell’s 1984.  Usually those writers are using lots of # and @ signs.

The # is known as a Trending Topic.   The @ is a Twitter account.  So when you Tweet to #CritThinkWrite, you are connecting your Tweet to other people interested in that topic, and also Tweeting to that # or Trending Topic.  When you Tweet to @CritThinkWrite, you are connecting your Tweet to my Feed, as that is the address of my Twitter account.  The @ is a great way to connect ideas to people, and people to ideas.

4. Use Those Trending Topics (#)!

The Trending Topic connects you to other people interested in the same thing.   If you write a post ,for instance, about concepts from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that you saw in The Matrix, you might add a hashtag #funassignment.  That way you are connecting your Tweet to any other people who also had a #funassignment.  

You can follow major issues or cutting edge news in this way, too, by searching for a hashtag. During Hurricane Sandy, I often used Twitter to find up-to-date information since the news usually lags behind at least a few hours.  New York Times Magazine or Atlantic articles can take months to write, but people are Tweeting their experiences all the time.  Of course we have to assess that information, as not everything we see on Twitter is true or comes from a reputable source, but Twitter provides us with of-the-moment connections to real people and real issues throughout the world.

5. Use Twitter to Document Your Research & Development of Ideas

If you are doing a research project for a class, or you are trying to figure out, say, how to use Twitter, then document your research process through Twitter.  The links to articles and your ideas are there.  Your Twitter feed will serve as a log of your involvement with that project or idea.  You can also use Twitter as a partial log for fieldwork, or to document your progression in school over a long term period.  In this way, Twitter can serve as a mini journal.  

Your Twitter account also shows potential future employers the types of issues you are concerned with, and the ways that you are thinking critically about course material and the world.  This is Purpose Centered Education in action, as Twitter allows you to connect what you do in the classroom to the real world.  In this way, Twitter can be robust tool for you to complete your Constructive Actions.  Social Media is not always used productively, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to help you accomplish your goals in school and in your life.

Using Pinterest for Educational Projects

Pinterest (pinterest.com) is a social networking site through which users share their favorite images of interests, hobbies, and activities.  It is estimated to be the fastest growing and third largest social media site, only behind only Facebook and Twitter, with over 48 million users as of April 2013. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 12% of online adults and nearly a fifth of online women (19%) use Pinterest. 

The user space is the equivalent of virtual bulletin boards, within which one can pin or collate images from all across the Internet. Users can have multiple boards for different topics or themes. Postings are called “pins” and users can either use Pinterest buttons embedded by owners in their web sites or a “Pin It” button in their web browser to create a pin. Each pin includes a caption, a short descriptions of the image, and links back to the site from which it originated. Other users can comment on pins and also repin items to their own boards.

While many hobbyists and retailers use pinterest to collate pictures of projects from the internet, pinterest can be used to support teaching and educational functions. Students can use it to collect resources for a project by pinning them to a board, adding captions and writing comments. These boards can be public or private. For a private board the only person who can see the board is the creator and individuals who are invited. Thus a student could collate a collection of pictures and resources that might only be available to a teacher or other students. Pinterest boards can also be group boards that allow all the members of a group to work together on a board that can either be public or private. Basic directions for setting up a pinterest boards can be found here.

All kinds of student projects can be supported by pinterest. For example, an earth science class might ask students to prepare presentations on different weather phenomenon and each student can create a board for their topic and share it with the class. Current events lend themselves easily to pinterest projects. Student assignments may want to include directions for a certain number of original pins rather than them simply repining from other boards. Students may be required to do in-class or online presentations using their pinterest boards.

In Purpose 5 Systems, MCNY Human Services students are required to develop a website for education, prevention and outreach. The development of a pinterest board can provide a preliminary step to this project and can be developed in an earlier purpose. For example, in Purpose 2 Systems, I  have my students develop and post to moodle fact sheets with internet images and resources based on their readings in Trattner's From Poor Law to Welfare State. This assignment could easily use pinterest boards. Students can provide captions that explain the images used and other class members may be required to comment. For additional ideas you might wish to look at  Using Pinterest in Education.

While learning management systems used in schools may be limited to use by students, faculty and staff, pinterest boards can be shared with others. A Constructive action project might include the development of a a board with community resources that could be linked to an agency's web site.
 
Faculty can use boards to to collect and share resources with others. For an example of these, check out my boards:

• Resources for Teaching with Technology

• Human Services Interest Board

• Documentary Films - Society and Human Services 

• Books Worth Reading 

The first board is clearly to collect resources for myself and share with other faculty. I often find myself going to my pinterest board to find to locate a resource. The last three are listed as resources for students on all my moodle shells and the last two boards were in response to students asking me about books to read or films to use in presentations or their agencies.

There are some limitations for using pinterest for projects. For example not all web sources have good quality items that can be pinned. I have sometimes been known to find a picture from one website and use a URL in the caption to go to another site. I often had to do this with the book and film boards since I wanted a picture of the book or film, which did not appear on the page with the review or article about the material. Also pins can not easily be rearranged on a board, so it requires planning and or sometimes removing and repining. Captions are limited to 500 characters so that students have to write clearly and succinctly, but it is significantly more characters than a twitter posting. Students will have to add a "Pin It" button to their web browser or use the "Pin It" app on their phones and tablets. Faculty will need to decide if they want to set up a class account that can have a board for each student or group. Faculty will own these boards, will need to add students as pinners using student email and can delete them these boards. If students are required to have individual accounts they can be asked to add faculty to their boards as editors and a method will need to be devised so that other members of the class can view the boards. If others are required to view the boards online, I suggest using a moodle forum to have students post the links to their project boards. And currently analytics are only available for business accounts.

Pinterest offers a tool for helping students and faculty to collate and share resources from across the web and is only limited by one's imagination. I would love to hear how others are using pinterest in their classes.

Teaching Purpose Centered Education

Last week I posted to faculty a link to the Audrey Cohen Archive, and mentioned I was developing a lesson plan to include Cohen’s writing in the first day of class.  The formula for a first day of class seems straight forward:  introduce yourself, get to know the students, go over the syllabus and course expectations, perhaps develop class rules collectively, get writing samples from the students, etc.  I rarely get into actual material on that first day, i.e. look at a text (discursive or visual) together with students.  Here’s a copy of the email I sent:

I have begun posting a link on all of my Moodle accounts to the Audrey Cohen Archive, available at the school's library website:  http://www.mcny.edu/library/libarchive.php.  The first day of class seems like an ideal opportunity to introduce (or reintroduce) students to Audrey Cohen's concept of "Purpose-Centered Education."  We will look at excerpts of "Audrey Cohen College System of Education:  Purpose-Centered Education," asking students to contextualize her theory into the "real world" of their studies at MCNY.  Particularly with the adaptation of Cohen's methodology to other majors or programs, this can spur a fruitful conversation about how Cohen's vision applies to 21st century learners and education.  As we discuss on an institutional level the future of Purpose-Centered Education, it may be useful to pose these same questions in the classroom.

One professor responded that if “Purpose Seminar professors are not doing this by now, they should not have been teaching this course.”  She is right.  But I was curious to know if, indeed, that was being done in the classroom across the board.

I did an “unofficial” (i.e. verbal) poll the next day in a Common Curriculum course.  There were 19 students from three different majors representing 5 different purposes.  Here are my findings, though obviously this is not a ‘proper’ quantitative study:

1.  100% of the students knew the founder and the founder’s name, Audrey Cohen.
2.  100% of the students had heard of “Purpose-Centered Education” and “Constructive Action.”  When I asked “Who can define it?”, not one student raised his or her hand.  This very well may be a case of first day trepidation, but when pushed, the students said they “had a sense of what it was but didn’t know how to define it.”  This led to a discussion about a lack of teaching what these terms mean.  One student said she did not learn about this in orientation; another said as a transfer student, she was not given guidance and didn’t know what a “Constructive Action” was until a particular professor worked with her personally. 
3. I asked students if they think their classes are integrated, and there was general disagreement on this issue.  Some agreed, others diddn't.  They understood in principle that their dimensions are supposed to tie into their Constructive Actions, but they said it didn’t always work that way, especially when courses are taken out of sequence.
4. I asked students if they thought their assignments in class had “meaning” or “purpose,” and 100% of them said yes.  This may suggest that Purpose can come in different forms, as this (#4) in a “strict” adherence to the Cohen Model could not exist without #3.
5. Though 100% of the students had heard of Audrey Cohen, only two out of 19 had read her writing.

With this unofficial data in my pocket, the next day I decided to bring Cohen into the classroom for a first semester course in the American Urban Studies Program  entitled “Self Assessment through Writing and Technology.”  After general introductions, I passed out a copy of Cohen’s article, “Audrey Cohen College System of Education: Purpose-Centered Education.”  I had students read it, making note of passages that stood out to them.  We then did close textual readings of a few passages, and discussed how Cohen’s model of education was different from a traditional model of education.  We looked at the charts in the text (pages 31 & 32) that demonstrate traditional education and how “knowledge is isolated in separate compartments” and then how that model is transformed when that knowledge is geared towards a “purpose.”  I mapped the main terms on the board:  Purpose-Centered Education, Constructive Action, Dimensions, Plan of Action, and then used the reading to fill those out, as well as to lead into a discussion of the course material.  I returned to the mapping of the terms throughout the introduction to the course.

Particularly as there continues to be discussion about what “Purpose Centered Education” looks likes or means, returning to Cohen’s original text seems integral to that conversation.  She happened to apply her concept of Purpose-Centered Education and Constructive Action to Human Services, but it is clear when you read Cohen’s writings that she believed it could be applied to different contexts.  As Cohen states, “When we learn most effectively, it is because we want to fulfill a vision or solve a problem:  finding the cure for a disease, creating a mode of transportation that will accommodate mass urbanization, helping people deal with loss, fostering artistic creativity, etc.” (Cohen, 28)  Reading Cohen in class on the first day helped students concretize the course material and the mission of the college overall.  It led to fruitful class discussion and a content-driven first day of class.  In short, I think it modeled for the students what Cohen herself envisioned as “Purpose-Centered Education.”