Early on, I used a visual approach in sending information to my students – pictures, 14 point font, etc. Then I took a training called Super Charge Your Announcement’s. The founder of the school’s Innovation lab taught this. I learned a new way to take my static text with an awkwardly placed picture announcement and make it into JPEG awesomeness. To this day, whenever someone asks me to show them what I do, we start with the PPT to JPEG tutorial.
Integrating technology is not easy. Currently, I use a Twitter feed in my classroom and I link out to Diigo and Blogger (we have a class topic blog). This is the second term I have used this. When I first started using these tools, I had to justify the visual design of my class to my chair. Because he would have to embed the Twitter feed, I had to explain why I needed to use Twitter. Luckily, my chair believed in my vision. Diggo and Blogger are easy sales. They are not changing the design of the course and students can use them if they want to or not – it’s their choice. Twitter is a little different. At first, students were freaked out that I would be sending them tweets of what I was eating and things of that nature. In class, we talked about the types of alerts I would post to Twitter – due dates, when I posted something of note to the class site, reminders, etc. Students were hesitant but deiced to try it. I had three students start following me and the remainder of the class followed on the class site. Then the inevitable happened. Our portal was changed and crashed. Students were locked out of the class site. One, then three, then ten students emailed, IMed and called me “TWEET US WHAT TO DO!” That wasn’t even grammatically correct but I started hitting the tweet waves. My students stayed on top of what was going on. They all came back to class once the portal was us (fourteen agonizing days later). I did not lose one student while many of my cohort colleagues lost students in the portal shuffle. To me, I had hit the big time. This technology that I had been hesitant with was rocking and keeping my students informed.
Then, IT happened. I went from teaching our four/fifth term students to our second/third term students. This term my students hate Twitter. No one is following the class tweets and they report that they don’t like the feed in the class.
I had an exceptional instructor last term that challenged me to learn more about the ARCS model and really thing about the design aspect. As a result, I recently did a professional development training on motivation and ARCS (if you are interested in the PPT, let me know and I will happily share).
As I was thinking about my current students’ resistance to Twitter and how I could change that resistance, I thought back to Keller. What would Keller do?! RELEVANCE! How is Twitter relevant to my students’ experience and to their goals?
This made me refer to TED:
Stanley McChrystal
Dan Pink
The light bulb popped on! TIME. My students’ time is their motivational factor. To make Twitter relevant to my students, I have to show them how it relates to their time management strategies and maintaining their goals.
Last Sunday in our weekly seminar, I said “Hey has anyone checked out the Twitter link today?” Of course students started typing that Twitter was lame and they were anti-Twitter. I said “Cool. I just wanted you all to know that if you are pinched for time, every day the Twitter feed tells you what is the urgent task for the day is.” A student asked “you mean you tell us what to do on Twitter?” I affirmed that and encouraged them to look at the class site. A student typed in “WOW! You remind of what time seminar is and yesterday you posted a help sheet.” The light bulb came on again! I am not sure that I have a devoted following like I did last term but we will see how the rest of the term goes and if students consider it a worthwhile investment of their time.
Works consulted:
Ellsworth, E. (2011). Motivating Adult Learners. Presentation for CTL Live Event, Kaplan Univerity.
Keller, J. M. (1987a). Development and use of the ARCS model of motivational design. Journal of Instructional Development, 10(3), 2 – 10.
Keller, J. M. (1987b). Strategies for stimulating the motivation to learn. Performance & Instruction, 26(8), 1-7.
Keller, J. M. (1999). Motivation in cyber learning environments. Educational Technology International, 1(1), 7 – 30.
Keller’s Website:
Erica,
ReplyDeleteWow. As I was reading your blog, I kept waiting for the punch line; students that DON’T like Twitter??? Is this commonplace? Is this the “new fad”? I have to tell you, I am surprised to learn this!
On the flip side, I love how you incorporate it into your class and curriculum. And what you are posting is far more interesting and useful than what you have for breakfast! Maybe THAT’S a social change we need too; change HOW Twitter is used. Like Facebook. People got tired of reading their friends’ status that they were tired and going to bed. Then politics got in the mix and I’ve seen a shift in how Facebook is used. More people are connecting on it rather than just hanging around talking about nothing. There’s still a lot of that, as it is a SOCIAL application, but I’m seeing more and more usefulness coming out of Facebook. Again though, that may just be how I am utilizing it. But I can see the same transformation needed and could happen with Twitter.
Did you see how someone followed the diffusion of the news of Bin Laden’s death? They have now confirmed that many people knew of the incident BEFORE the “not in the loop” authorities or mainstream media did. In fact, I read somewhere that the first tweet came from some who lives in the neighborhood and reported “something’s going on here”.
So maybe your students aren’t necessarily against Twitter, maybe they are the rising force of social change in Twitter’s application!
-Christine
Christine,
ReplyDeleteWe are four weeks into the term now and some of my students are coming around. Because I teach criminal justice and fire science students, I really have to sell the use of technology. A great thing right now is that so many criminal justice entities are using Twitter. We have talked about the pros and cons so they can see the usefulness.
I think you are right. We have have to tinker and find the usefulness for our students. It will be different each time we try a technology. The bonus, I think is that we learn that piece on how we are changing society. Interesting tidbit about Facebook. This week Amazon posted Eric Greitens' new book (he spoke last year for Walden in Dallas). If not for Amazon posting that piece with HUMANITARIAN in the tag, I would not have caught it. I think that businesses are becoming more savvy to how consumers are looking for more and how consumers are using social networking. This relates to Dan Pink's idea that people are looking for better ways to be involved and spend their money and time.
Erica