Zen and the Art of Johnny Bunko

At the beginning of this summer I picked up a copy of “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need” by one of my favorite authors Dan Pink. I had the opportunity to see Dan speak at the 2008 NAIS Annual Conference in New York in February and during his keynote, he referenced a new book he was working on that would be coming out in the spring, a career guide of sorts, done in the style of a manga. Sounded interesting. It was originally part of my “summer” reading list and even though the book takes no more than an hour to read, I didn’t get to it until last week.

Continue reading…

Technology and Social Media Trends for Schools in 2009

There is no question that the rest of the world will continue to forge ahead with adopting new technology and implementing new marketing and communication strategies well before those of us in the education world will. However, I have spent some time recently thinking and Twittering with friends and colleagues (@steveritchie @ernestkoe @alexragone @AdmissionsQuest ) about how the shift to “social technologies” is going to reshape the way schools work with students, communicate with parents and alumni and forward their mission. Social media technologies function to further the digital conversation and connect groups of people with one another in ways that traditional web based technologies cannot.

Continue reading…

Group Posting to Twitter Using Group Tweet

A colleague recently asked me how I set up the WA Mash Twitter account so that it allowed for students to be able to post to that account. While I feel strongly that Twitter needs to find a way to set up groups, waiting for that to happen may have you waiting a long time. After searching for other options, I landed across a service called GroupTweet.

Group Tweet essential asks you to set up a generic Twitter account that you specifically intend to use for this function and register it with their site. Once the site is registered with GroupTweet, you then ask the group, in my case, my creative writing class to follow that Twitter account. Once they are following all they need to do is send a direct Tweet to that registered account and unlike a regular Twitter account where it sits in a private inbox, it will post to the group account publicly.

I know that there might be a danger with allowing this to happen because anyone who follows that account can send a direct message to it and have it display publicly, but it does show who sent the post and in 3 months of using the service, I have fortunately had no problems. If you are a teacher looking to use Twitter for group discussion/collaboration I suggest you check it out.

http://grouptweet.com

Photo Credit: mfilej

WA Mash…Preparing for a new trimester

Lately, most of my time has been spent working with my creative writing students on the development of a new online magazine called “WA Mash” (Worcester Academy Mashup) and in short, it has re-energized my teaching practice. In 1996 I began my first year of teaching and was given as part of my teaching load, taught senior level creative writing. As an English major at Union my focus was on creative writing and in many ways, I was taught in a traditional, “old humanities” paradigm that truly served me well. My focus was and continues to be on the creative process. But back then, the reality was that the ability for my students to publish beyond the structure of our class or even school community was limited. We were tethered to the world of old media. Print publications.

Enter the fall of 2008. After being inspired by a presentation on YouTube by Richard E. Miller, Chair of Rutgers English, The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors challenged the comfortable, and somewhat traditional notion of why and how we should teach students writing. The birth of the “New Humanities” where the focus is on creative non-fiction prose fit nicely with the work I had been exploring in the past few years with blogging and journaling. And so, WA Mash was born. I gave each student an account on our Wordpress blog, they were given contributor access and were set off to find interesting ideas that would culminate in original content.

Almost 9 weeks later, the hits on our blog are reaching between 100 to 300 hits daily. Close to 50% of our users are returning visitors, we have over 85 followers on Twitter and several student articles have received thought provoking comments from our readers. What is most important, is that students are serving as content creators, they are writers and critical consumers of information. We read magazines like Slate.com, Salon.com, the New York Times Opinions & Editori

als section and the latest, The Daily Beast. The experiment is still ongoing, and as the end of this first trimester begins to reach its climax, I find myself reflecting on what has worked and what has not, adapting and modifying so that Mash can continue to grow. But what brings me the most joy and satisfaction is that 19 juniors and seniors have left their mark on the digital world. They have shared their thoughts, their ideas and they have engendered conversations. That is truly the power behind the new humanities, social media and teaching and learning.

Photo Credit: b_d_solis