education

To the Students: An Invitation to Twitter

Dear Writer, Twitter can be used for much more than publishing to the world what you are having for dinner. There’s a metaphor gifted to me from a former professor that goes like this: writing floats on a sea of conversation. Twitter is often about conversation. It’s great for making professional connections, accessing information published [...]

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NCTE 2012 Handout: Twitter in the Writing Classroom

Dear Colleague, I use a metaphor gifted to me by a former professor to think about my professional life. It goes, Writing Floats on a Sea of Conversation. In the fifteen years I’ve been in writing classrooms, I’ve come to believe it’s important for me to help students navigate all of the conversations they are [...]

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Would you vote and tell me about your Twitter use?

his post is for anyone who thinks they might want to try out Twitter, or perhaps, anyone who could use a set of instructions to pass along to students. The handout to my instructions are here, or you can just read them below: Consider if you’d like for people to know who you are on [...]

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Who Will the Students Follow on Twitter?

The idea is that my students will follow tweeters within a topic that interests them. This worries me in that I’m sure I’ll have lots of Yankee fans who will automatically want to follow the team’s outfielder and frequent tweeter, Nick Swisher. I don’t object to students following Swisher, but as far as the class [...]

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Is This a Problem? Twitter in the Classroom

Each student Tweeted a reaction or question they had about the syllabus. Most of the students stared at their computer or cell phone screens. From my walking around the room, I saw that students were reading each other’s Tweets and responding to them. I had the website Tweetchat up on the projection screen with everyone’s [...]

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