Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom

This presentation was made at EduCon 2.1 in Philadelphia on Saturday, January 24th.

Can we harness the power of social media to provide students with a vehicle for exploring and creating original content? WA Mash (Worcester Academy Mashup) is an online magazine where the power of social media is captured to provide creative writing students with a platform for exploring ideas and fostering and contributing to the larger global conversation. By exploring the possibilities offered by the use of social media tools, we explore how one teacher is defining the New Humanities at the secondary school level. Built off the work of Richard E. Miller at Rutgers University, students blog in a timely fashion about a wide variety of cultural, political and economic issues. Most importantly, it is about creating original content and redefining the role of student and teacher. They compliment their work with audio, video, photos and micro-blogging by integrating social media tools like YouTube and Vimeo, Twitter and Flickr. Think Slate or Salon for high school. The conversation will explore the nature and role of the New Humanities in education. How do we define it? What does it look it? What role does it play? And how do we move forward with implementation?

The resource wiki for this presentation can be found at educon21.wikispaces.com/211-3

Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom from Antonio Viva on Vimeo.

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.

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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