Shakin' It Up in the Classroom with Twitter- Part 2
January 26, 2015
As the idea was percolating in my brain, I, of course, went straight to the internet for added inspiration. I came across a project called Playing Shakespeare that The Globe put together with Deutsche Bank. It’s amazing! Creating the look and feel of modernity and relevancy, it mimics social media platforms to conduct character studies and promote engagement with the play. It also gave me an excellent entry point for further developing my project.
So, I went to the EdTech office at my school, which is manned by some of the most helpful, innovative and talented people I’ve ever worked with. I need here to give a special thanks to Steve Katz (@stevekatz) and Ben Summerton (@bensummerton) for helping me frame my idea into manageable action. Steve and I came up a with a hashtag that the kids would use to post-- #PateKIS-- and talked through the hashtag process. One of my principal objectives is that the students see that a broader conversation is going on out there about the play; Merchant of Venice still active lives in people’s imaginations. It’s also controversial, and I wanted them to see that, too. So, ultimately, we decided that the kids would have to have two hashtags for every post-- #PateKIS was mandatory every time, and they could choose the second one. If the hashtag was about the play directly, they should use #MerchantofVenice; it’s an active chat and used often. If they decided to bring in an outside news story or source, they could hashtag a theme like #Justice.
Another important component that Ben stressed was that the students should show meaningful contributions as part of the assignment requirements, that they purposefully add value to the conversation. They have to show ENGAGEMENT, which I of course wanted, but Ben’s stress on those points made it clear how much I had to communicate that idea to the kids.
As I started to put together the assignment, I also ran across this post called “How Twitter Saved my Literature Class: A Case Study with Discussion” by Mary Steward. I couldn’t believe my luck! This was exactly what I needed. The main take-away for me here was that the requirements of what they could post shouldn’t be too rigid-- they need some guidance to get them started, but it just can’t be too formalized if the goal is to magnify the students' voices.
So, based on the advice of the stalwart EdTech team, and the helpful tips from “How Twitter Saved my Literature Class,” I created the requirements of my project which are attached here. I adapted the rubric from a website that I found addressing the academic uses of twitter, which is included on the google doc if you are interested in seeing the original as well as linked above.
The only thing left? Implementation...
