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| Mahtomedi High School language arts teacher Sarah Lorntson, who uses Twitter to communicate with students, says students complain "that I don't tweet enough." ( Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi) |
Mahtomedi High School language arts teacher Sarah Lorntson reminds her students about assignment deadlines and shares writing advice even when they're not in her classroom.
She takes to the social media sphere, using Twitter to capture students' attention in 140 characters or less.
Lorntson said many of her students have smartphones and are constantly plugged into social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. So, it made sense for her to start tweeting, giving her another way to reach out to them.
"My students' constant complaint is that I don't tweet enough," Lorntson said. "They want more communication from us. They want that engagement."
As the use of social media explodes, school districts are grappling with if and how teachers should connect with students via online networking. Some, like New York City public schools, ban it. But in Minnesota, few districts have policies governing use of social media. Some teachers find social media useful, but others worry it can bring students and teachers a little too close for comfort.
Oh great. Another school teacher creating expectations we college/univ. instructors will be expected to follow. It's just another example of how amazingly out of touch I've become with youth. Even as a brown-nosing swot in school, I wouldn't have wanted to be in constant touch with my favourite teachers, let alone the idiots or gymnosadists.
ReplyDeleteAnytime I see a purported adult wearing a tie-dyed garment, a warning flag goes up. Sorry, but Twitter doesn't serve my needs: I like to train my students how to think thoughts more complex than can be expressed in 140 characters or less. Also, it gives students a license to use the excuse that they didn't get the tweet/e-mail/text/whatever.
ReplyDeleteDespite what the tin-foil-hat crowd might say, I have no doubt that when it becomes feasible to implant computer chips directly into the brain to enable e-mail etc. 24/7/365, they will be a huge hit.
DeleteA tye-dyed t-shirt with the school name printed on it....is this a uniform??
DeleteYah, let's all be non-conformists together, and all march to the same different drummer. When everyone is hip, no one will be hip. The Firesign Theatre had an album about this: Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him.
DeleteIts a Gay Straight Alliance shirt. Probably designed by the kids.
DeleteThat explains the "GSA" under the school name, then. Thanks for explaining, Donalbain.
DeleteHmm. I told them in class. That wasn't enough?
ReplyDeleteI do not like being expected to be on call 24/7. Students don't read my emails; why are they going to read my tweets? Anytime I've tried getting them to do a project using Twitter they act like I have alien tentacles growing out of my body in unfortunate places or maybe three heads or radioactive eyes or something. Maybe the kids this woman is working with will be different by the time they get to us, but I find my students want a separation between social media (=fun, friends) and "other web-based stuff my profs make me use" (=not fun, school-related).
ReplyDeleteOh, I like the Sgt. Pepper's poster on the wall. Kinda goes with the whole shirt thing.
(Sorry, I am still being cranky. Blah.)
I don't think you're cranky, at all. I think you're dead-on.
DeleteI go to FB to escape from the irritation they cause, to lose myself in searches for fun Neil Degrasse-Tyson and Willy Wonka memes. I don't want to use it as a teaching tool. I use Twitter to follow Neil Gaiman and William Gibson and Nova. I don't want to have to wade through the (probably) inane tweets of my students to get to the good stuff. And yes, I'm aware that I could have multiple accounts, but I already have work email, two Gmail accounts, and FB to check. I'd say that's enough.
When do students start connecting with *others* on others' terms? We're starting to hear rumbles that our Uni will switch to e-texts -- because the students want them. Why? The PTB say cost. I say that this group of digital natives is hooked on perceived obsolescence: they want them because they're new.
ReplyDeleteNot bragging (well, sort of bragging), but I'm probably more tech savvy than most of my students; I can also read Latin. When do they start expanding the limits of their worlds?
I think that this is the best question that NO ONE (besides you and me and few others, most of them here on CM) is asking: "When do students start connecting with *others* on others' terms?"
DeleteElizabeth Kolbert looked at parenting ("Why Are American Kids So Spoiled") http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert and I came up with my own theory, which is that we are living through the backlash created when Gen X grew up and decided that they'd gotten a crappy deal because both parents worked, so they were going to be different from *their* parents and really "be there" for their kids.
They don't meet others on others terms because "they're special" and *everything* revolves around them. I remember reading an article many years ago (my daughter was a baby) about a parent who just let her child dictate whatever he wanted to do that day. No force, no pressure. If she'd scheduled a playdate but he didn't want to go, she called and canceled, even if it was at the last minute. Another reader had written in to ask the question that I had been thinking (so maybe this was online? Before I stopped going to parenting forums?): What happens when this kid gets out into the world, and discovers that it will not order itself for his maximum enjoyment?
I was hoping that we (in education) could stem the tide of these self-absorbed folks (and let's face it we were all self-absorbed once, but we came out of it because it was expected of us). Instead, administration just keeps rolling over and rolling out new ideas for "engaging them where they are." Faugh.
BC: What happens when this kid gets out into the world, and discovers that it will not order itself for his maximum enjoyment?
DeleteBidness is already being told how to order itself for this kid.
If you want to lie awake in a pool of your own sweat, imagine what the world will be like when this Ptolemaic-cosmic starchild is actually in power!
Is this how high school teachers dress? I chose the wrong path.
ReplyDeleteI think every school needs a mixture of teachers, from the tie-die "artsie" ones (like we have here) to the button-down uptight ones. Students can learn from both. I only worry when I see schools that are all one or the other.....
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely not. "Cool" teachers may wear berets, daishikis, other traditional foreign wear, or cowboy or biker attire. Even then, no more than 10% of the teachers in any school may do so, except if they are science or mathematics teachers, in which case only one is allowed per school. None may be the teacher who never studied foreign language who at least once per term gets on the intercom and reads a long list of names, nearly all to comic effect.
DeleteAdults may never wear tie-dies, under any circumstances whatsoever. Not even the Grateful Dead wore them. Many of their fans did, but they weren't adults.
On the first day of my junior year of high school, my teacher wrote her email address on the board. This was more years ago than I care to disclose. We were all like, "What the hell is that?" It seemed weird to want to contact your teacher outside of the school day, and weirder still to want to use the Information Super Highway to do it.
ReplyDeleteJust last week I had a student who wanted me to call her on a Saturday night from my home phone at 10:00 p.m. Failing that, she wanted me to come in on a Sunday morning to campus to meet her. If they don't know how to do something, they want an answer RIGHT NOW on their terms. (Needless to say, I fulfilled neither of her requests.)
DeleteThose same students who use their I-phones and Ipads 24/7 often complain that they couldn't submit a paper because their Internet connection was down.
ReplyDeleteYuuuuuuuup.
DeleteTie-dye shirt + Sgt Peppers poster on the wall = trouble.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with what the teacher is doing, but what I do have a problem with is when students expect ME to do the same as the 'other' teacher. We usually get this in the form of "but my other profs give me A's for shit work!"