The Wired Campus - Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class. Cole W.
Camplese, director of education-technology services at Pennsylvania State University at University Park, prefers to teach in classrooms with two screens — one to project his slides, and another to project a Twitter stream of notes from students. He knows he is inviting distraction — after all, he’s essentially asking students to pass notes during class. But he argues that the additional layer of communication will make for richer class discussions. Mr. Camplese first tried out his idea in a course he co-taught last spring to about 20 graduate students at Penn State.
Back then, most of his students were unfamiliar with Twitter, the microblogging service that limits messages to 140 characters. Once students warmed to the idea that their professors actually wanted them to chat during class, students begin floating ideas or posting links to related materials, the professor says. Still, when Mr. Return to Top. Apophenia: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo... from my perspective.
Last week, I gave a talk at Web2.0 Expo.
From my perspective, I did a dreadful job at delivering my message. Yet, the context around my talk sparked a broad conversation about the implications of turning the backchannel into part of the frontchannel. In the last week, I’ve seen all sorts of blog posts and tweets and news articles about what went down. At this point, the sting has worn off and I feel that it would be responsible to offer my own perspective of what happened.
First, context. Because of the high profile nature of Web2.0 Expo, I decided to write a brand new talk. A week before the conference, I received word from the organizers that I was not going to have my laptop on stage with me. When I showed up at the conference, I realized that the setup was different than I imagined. I only learned about the Twitter feed shortly before my talk. When I walked out on stage, I was also in for a new shock: the lights were painfully bright. Yes, I cried. So…. the Backchannel? Teaching With Twitter: Not for the Faint of Heart - Technology. By Jeffrey R.
Young West Lafayette, Ind. Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels. OK, asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn't risk life or limb. He has given them the power to do just that. A constant stream of comments, often tangential, accompanies his talks.
The moment is telling. The unanswered question, though, is whether that theory can work in practice, in a room packed primar ily with 18- to 22-year-olds who can seem more interested in high grades than in high-mindedness. That uncertainty actually excites Mr. Many colleagues are watching such experiments with a mix of curiosity and disbelief to see how the professors land.
Students seem to love the chance to make their voices heard in class without having to actually speak. Emboldened Students. Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class.