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This lesson plan combines the experiential learning of a field trip with the social networking platform, Twitter, to enhance
student motivation and engagement.
It results in dynamic, student-centered, individualized instruction.
Using Twitter in this way not only works to enhance the learning of course objectives but also introduces and instructs students
on the use of Twitter as a professional development tool, promoting life-long learning!
My husband, Dr. Kern Jackson, and I partnered up to implement the Twitter lesson at the left. Over time and cultural shifts some tweets may have been removed but you may click the image on the right to view what is left of the #usaSelma back channel from 2016.
Rationale: The heart of this activity is: fostering a culture of learning while collaboratively constructing collective knowledge. The database created can be accessed later in the course of study to further understanding. As participants scroll through the back channel, tweeting is modeled for them by their peers. Even though experience with both the Twitter platform and student levels of prior content knowledge are varied, when novices interact with more knowledgeable others, all students are rewarded by becoming a part of the knowledge-building community. This successful collaboration takes place due, in part, to valuing the diverse insights from all participants, each of whom is working at her own pace toward building an individual understanding.
Implementation: We have experimented with this for the past couple years and have learned that clear expectations for rigorous discourse makes a strong impact on the level of observations, connections, and interactions. At first glance, the tweets may not knock your socks off, but when you stop to think that these comments are done on the fly, in a highly stimulating real world environment, you begin to realize that it is a very rich learning experience.
In looking at the feed, “#USASelma –A Field trip In The Footsteps Of Freedom,” we can readily see that students are cognitively active in making sense of their observations; working them out in their thoughts so that they can then produce coherent representations of them within the confines of 140 character tweets. Not only do students evaluate and juxtapose their new observations within the context of their prior knowledge, they also integrate it with the communal knowledge being constructed with peers in the twitter chat. Review of the chat also indicates that students work to transfer their understanding to other contexts.
Below are a couple of assignment sheets outlining the expectations for a Twitter assignment. Before the big trip to Selma, we did "Twitter practice" assignment on campus.
NOTE: When using guiding questions to provide structure on a fieldtrip, Tweetdeck is a great tool for pre-scheduling guiding tweets. Pre-setting questions helps to keep things on schedule and allows instructors to be fully present to address the logistics and many teachable moments inherent in field trips.
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