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I use Twitter in all of the writing classes I teach, from the first-year composition course to the advanced writing class. In the first-year course, we read What is This Buzz Word Transliteracy, an interview with Ryan Nadel, in preparation to read J. R. Carpenter's multimedia work, Entre Ville. Later in the semester we read the novel Rock Paper Tiger, and the author Lisa Brackmann visited the class to discuss it and her writing process with the class. Several weeks after the semester has ended, a student in the class is tweeting confidently and in his own voice with a professional writer, using terminology from class.
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Prezi: Something Other than PowerPoint
For a final project in the intermediate writing course, students use Prezi to make a presentation. One student transformed her digital literacy narrative into a visual, digital presentation With or Without Identity and in her reflection considered how different media require us to think differently about language, image, movement and shape, etc.. She also faced the challenge of documenting source material. Having written an academic essay, then transformed that into a digital media presentation, she saw the possibilities for a lyric essay, and transformed the piece again. It was published in the online literary magazine gloom cupboard.
Not all students, of course, will submit their writing for publication in this way (or find this kind of success), but on their blogs, in their tweets, via their flickr and Instagram images, they are engaging with an audience outside the academy while discussing and thinking critically about the choices they make in the classroom.
Not all students, of course, will submit their writing for publication in this way (or find this kind of success), but on their blogs, in their tweets, via their flickr and Instagram images, they are engaging with an audience outside the academy while discussing and thinking critically about the choices they make in the classroom.
Using Social Media to Interact with Students Beyond the Classroom
Since we use Twitter, flickr and Instagram in class, I am able to maintain contact with students who want to via these platforms. A former student recently invited me to read my poem 1054 Solano Ave. with his theater production group PianoFight (which just set a Kickstarter record for theater group funding) during their National Poetry Month project in April. They posted the videos on their site as well as on YouTube.
Presentations on Prezi Containing Assignments, Resources and Student Projects
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