Every semester, I get a student or two who sends me an article they found in the news about a topic we studied in class. It's very rewarding to see students making connections between the classroom and their world. An idea to encourage more of this would be to start a Delicious account and have students share interesting articles they find. This could lead to classroom discussion groups.
One idea for Pintrest could be for students to find and pin photos that depict microbes in everyday life. Another idea could be for them to post their own photos from lab as sort of a study guide for practical exams.
Some challenges with both of these could be getting everyone on board to participate. Perhaps trying it out as extra credit for the first semester could be a good trial for the instructor to see how apt students are to participate. This could give an initial measurement of how much students are really interested in the class. If points are associated with this assignment and it is required, maybe some students will post lousy articles. (But is all homework that great anyhow?)
Could the opinions of other faculty members be considered a challenge for implementing these social media tools in the classroom?
I think this is a really interesting idea. Whether the other people in the department would be OK with it probably depends on the department and whether they prefer only to teach by traditional lecture, etc.
ReplyDeleteCrystal, I think that your activity sounds like a great way to not only incorporate technology into the classroom but to also encourage students to think about how they can use their everyday lives to understand the classroom material in a different way.
ReplyDeleteLove this idea! As for other faculty, it is important to be prepared for questions and perhaps some discord. You might explain your reasoning for implementing the activity including how it will improve student outcomes, share research studies about the effectiveness of the teaching methods, or even implement your own Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study. Sometimes an indication that you are studying the teaching method will, at least temporarily, silence the naysayers.
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