Teaching the Concept or Teaching a Tool? Or, using Status.net for classroom microblogging

Previously on ProfHacker, I’ve discussed different tools for synchronous and asynchronous classroom discussion, and included Twitter as one of those tools. At the upcoming Computers & Writing Conference I’ll be part of two Twitter workshops along with Karl Stolley, Rachael Sullivan, and Bill Wolff, and at the University of Mary Washington Faculty Academy I will run a workshop on practical Twitter use.

However, Twitter is not the be all and end all of real-time status updates, or short bursts of content sent off into the ether, or momentary shouts from the nearest mountaintop, or whatever you want to call it—many people call it microblogging.

Services like Tumblr and posterous offer platforms through which you can post quick comments, longer entries, links to other posts and other media; this is an example of microblogging in that it retains the structure of a blog (titles, posts, comments, etc) but the reader’s expectation is that the content will be quite short.

Social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter (and even MySpace, and others) use the status update, or the answers to the questions “What’s on your mind?” (Facebook) or “What’s happening?” (Twitter), as the prompt toward microblogging. One might consider an archive of your status updates to be a microblog, although the intertwined communication that occurs (replies, for instance) throws that a little out of whack.

Regardless of the technical aspects of the tools, the concepts are similar: microblogging is a specific type of writing for the web and can be harnessed for pedagogical purposes. You can see this not only in the types of workshops offered at conferences, but if you spend any amount of time on Twitter and follow more than a few instructors at some point you will see Twitter hashtags for specific classes, or you will be followed by a new batch of students because their instructor said “follow these people.” Instructors are using Twitter in the classroom, but could also be using other microblogging tools to achieve other goals.

If the goal of your class is to specifically teach Twitter, or how to interact in an open microblogging space, then of course using Twitter is the way to achieve those goals. But if you are more interested in teaching aspects of microblogging, and especially if the public nature of Twitter keeps students from interacting as they would in a more private space, then you might find Status.net useful.

What is Status.net?

Much like you can download and install WordPress at your own domain with your own web hosting account OR obtain an account at WordPress.com, you can either download and install the Status.net microblogging platform OR take advantage of their hosted service. The image used in this post is from a screengrab of status.net as used by the Mozilla community, but hosted at status.net.

Specifics of the Status.net Platform

Since this isn’t a how-to post but instead a “hmm, let me think about that for the future” post, I’ll be brief. As with most open-source software that also has a hosted component (see also: blogging platforms, wiki platforms), there are different types of accounts with different costs. The Status.net account types for their hosted services include base components as well as premium components, but these do not appear to be fleshed out at this time. However, it does appear that if I had under 100 students and wanted them all to microblog, I could do that for free in the “Private” grouping. I will bet that although there isn’t an explicit “educational use” category, there will be shortly.

If you want to download and install Status.net on your own web host, however, you’re free to do anything and everything, for as many users as you can manage, for free; the hosted solution is for those of you without a hosting account or the technical skills or desire to maintain your own communications platform (it’s not something the average user would want to do).

Using Status.net in the Classroom

Instead of having students create a Twitter account (assuming they do not already have one, which—purely based on anecdotal evidence—is a safe bet), have them create an account on the Status.net installation or hosted service. The only people who will ever be part of your Status.net installation or hosted service are those you invite—those students in your classes. Already, Status.net will have filtered out the noise some find in Twitter, such as the ability for pornographers and multilevel marketers to follow our pure-hearted students and send @replies and messages filled with spam and phishing attacks.

In other words, your virtual community will be controlled, but without removing the communication fostered through the microblogging process. In a perfect world, this would lead to increased and more fruitful discussion, yet still in a technical environment that looks a lot like something else (Twitter). Using Status.net to host “Twitter-like”” interactions and communications but without all the extraneous elements would teach both transferable rhetorical and technical skills.

At least that’s what I thought when I started poking around with Status.net; I thought how great it would be that I could just throw this up alongside the course website and have students work solely within our own private social network without having to cobble together some sort of custom Twitter feed. I also thought it would go a long way toward overcoming the whole “Twitter is dumb! I heard it’s about what your cat had for breakfast. Who cares?” chorus of complaints.

Status.net has been described as a “Twitter clone,” but it’s not. It takes a different approach (via add-ons, group membership, and more) to a similar technical communication platform. I will be keeping an eye on the product offerings and will likely integrate it into a course in the near future. Hopefully it will get some ProfHacker readers thinking along similar lines.