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My friend, Steve Gasser, has developed a great little 20 – 30 minute game/activity for Social Media presentations/workshops. While his is targeted at the non-profit sector, the materials can easily be adapted to almost any other industry.
image provided by Steve Gasser
Games are a great way to introduce and reinforce learning because they help drive home application of the topic. Steve’s game is quick and simple. I’d have to say it is one of the best exercises that I have seen in a long time. I am jealous that I didn’t think of it first. Steve is openly giving it to the community, for which I admire him even more. I plan to use it and adapt it. I hope you will too. Thanks Steve!
Steve’s blog post and materials may be found here:
About a week ago, my workday ended a bit early and I decided to treat myself at the local Starbucks. School in Georgia had recently started up and I did not realize that Starbucks is the local hangout for educators and tutors. Anyway, the whole coffee bar was filled with educators and they were talking social media and how they need to be involved because the students are. Being a learning professional and a social media advocate – this was an intriguing conversation to hear and be invited to participate in.
The conversation gravitates to Twitter, the popular microblogging tool, and the desire of math tutors to utilize this tool for educational purposes. The concept agreed upon is one that utilizes Twitter to submit a series of math problems to the students. The students are then rewarded for correct answers – the quicker the response, the greater the reward. Great concept, however it has a few concerns.
The first is that of copying answers. The answer to this is simple – use direct message replies. A direct reply in Twitter is only seen by the two parties in the conversation. Another concept to solve this dilemma is to only reward correct answers made via direct replies or “at” replies prior to the first “at” reply. This adds a bit of strategy to the game for the students… do they only do direct replies and collect points or do they eliminate the opportunity for thier peers to earn points by locking the problem with an “at” reply. If you haven’t figured it out by now, an “at” reply is visible to everyone and therefore could be copies or retweeted (a way of rebroadcasting a message).
The second hesitation is a bit more complex because it involves the whole Twitter community. Is it appropriate to flood the Twitter timeline with math questions and answers? How do you prevent outside interference from non-students? These are etiquette questions. My opinion echoes what eventually was consensus, the twitter community may grow tired of a prolonged use of the tool in this way. Fortunatly, there are other microblogging tools you could use to create your own environment – such as Yammer.
Regardless, this concept is a very cool one for integrating social media into the classroom, or extra-classroom experience. You may reach me on Twitter @rmarkmoore. In the meantime, i’d love to hear about your thoughts on social media in the classroom or your thoughts on the etiquette concern.
While catching up on my post vacation reading, I ran across a couple of interesting articles and a videoclip. At first glance, they did not seem to be related. And I’m still not convinced they are – yet, my mind has been cranking away on these things for the best part of the day. First, let me share the article links:
The first article from the WSJ looks at a recent study of linguistics and how social interaction improves results. This doesn’t surprise me since learning a new language is more effective when you have people to converse and practice with. The second column talks about how Facebook is improving the social interactions of her children. she also mentions learning projects that take place in Facebook. I’ll buy the interaction part, other than that, I am not sold on the premise of Facebook as a learning tool – at least not yet.
The third item I found today was a video clip on YouTube from the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. This group is doing some interesting research and projects. I urge you to check them out. anyway – here was the thought provoking video.
There are a few points that jumped out at me:
The amount of debt incurred in gaining an education in comparison to what many people in the world “bring home” in salary.
The amount of “relevant” readings which are irrelevant
The breakdown of time spent as a student
The imbalance between research papers and e-mail written
The question of technology as a solution.
To me, this video highlights how American education systems are broken or antiquated. We are missing the mark, and paying huge amounts of money for our educations. I’ll be the first to say that students also need ot apply themselves, but there has got to be a better way…
…And that is what I must think about because the answers do not come easy. I’ve long given up on the premise that technology IS THE solution. It’s an enabler, but is it now getting in the way?
I’m still blown away by this video. what are your thoughts? Better yet, what are your suggestions to address the key points you found interesting?
A quick blog post for those in the learning world. Elliott Masie has a new ebook available for free. It’s a very quick read full of insightful tips and thoughts to consider. I especially like the quick article on Talent Management by Comcast’s CLO Martha Soehren. Visit the Masie Center website and download the book here. Kudos to Bill Byron Concevitch for editing.
And thanks again Elliott for all you give to the community!
