Then I stated getting messages about discussions and joining discussion groups. Now this is much more interesting. Teaching is a profession in that you can work at a large university, school district, non-profit and be as isolated in conversation as living on a desert island. Not conversation as in "Hi, How are ya?". Conversation in subjects that you can become deeply engaged with fellow academics who are seeking the type of intellectual and meaningful conversations that promoted us to earn our advanced degrees in the first place.
LinkedIn gives faculty a wonderful venue to find conversation anytime and anywhere they are. It is a tool that we can use to interact with others.
As an undergraduate, Gertrude spent her leisure time in argument.
''Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.''
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), U.S. author. "The Radcliffe Manuscripts," Form and Intelligibility, Exposition Press, ed. Rosalind S. Miller (1949). Undergraduate composition at Radcliffe College, 1895.
She was naturally an adventurist in conversation. Alas, we don't have many naturally occurring Gertrude Stein students in our classes. Therefore we need to foster them. Tools help. Just as faculty often feel isolated in wanting to engage in conversation, students do also. The tools that work for us will work for them also.
While seeking on the Internet on ways in which faulty can prompt conversation it is clear that many faculty are turning to the one thing students love, social media, to start conversation. A lesson we learned from using Second Life is that students who are too shy, afraid, or intimidated to speak up in class will respond behind the protection of their avatar. There is a barrier of protection there.
Is this good? Is this bad? This is not a judgement, this is a realization. Some of us purists prefer the dinner party (and a bottle of wine or two). However, in our global world, using social media is becoming common place in industry as workers work from home, teams members live in different states and countries, customers are global, and day to day communication goes electronic, even from cubicle to cubile.
But we do have a modern lesson from Stein. Stein used tools to start conversations: dinner parties and taking a controversial stand. Two things she did:
She created an informal atmosphere and environment where everyone felt safe. Social media does that. Students can be sitting in a coffee shop, at home watching kids, or at the beach (not recommended because of blowing sand). Even in class students are much more comfortable responding through social media than raising their had, often a frightening experience for them.
She prompted her guests to bring up a subject and then she took the opposite side, giving them the comfort of arguing a subject that they know. This was very clever of her. Her guests felt safe talking about what they knew. By her arguing her conversation partners were drawn out of their shells, learning and reflecting. Faculty can do that. Students use the technology and faculty do what they always do, but with more students engaged.
In addition, Twitter conversations in class often lead to students talking amonst themselves carrying the conversation to a new level. We have found the chat on Second Life to be a rich discord among students as they check facts, add to the conversation and get to know each other.
Below is a video on how to add Twitter to your class. Twitter has proved to be a very effective way to engage a large class into lively discussion.
Other References:
How Schools Can Harness Social Media Avoiding the Pitfalls.
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