Teaching with Twitter

NCC ERC Day 2014Prof. Emily Hegarty, English Dept.

What is Twitter?

www.twitter.com

• 200 million registered users; 400 million tweets per day

• 10 most popular accounts (30-50 million followers): Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, YouTube, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Rihanna, Instagram, Justin Timberlake (source: Wikipedia)

2 bits of advice

• It’s a stream - don’t try to read it all.

• Use a client.

Ways to use twitterConversation

Publicity

News

Networking

Personal learning network

Political activism

The backchannel

Teaching with twitter increases student engagement*

*R. Junco et al., “The effect of Twitter on college student engagement and grades.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2010.

Creepy Treehouse

Why bother?

Student community that lasts beyond the semester

Ambient awareness of course

Digital literacy

Possible assignments• Tweet about class readings or continue class discussion or ask questions

• Share resources (great websites, etc.)

• Follow experts in course subject matter (PLN)

More suggestions in resource page:

http://emilyhegarty.commons.mla.org/twitter-resources/

Issues and concerns• Twitter no longer allows scraping; archiving

(for preservation or assessment) is difficult

• FERPA gray area

• Twitter’s data-mining

• Privacy from students

• Student resistance; compartmentalized education