Telling Social Stories with Storify

Thanks for this post. I really like the way storify looks: even our local newspapers have been using it. Unfortunately, I asked for an invite in September of last year and am still waiting. It would be nice if they opened up to regular old users since I know a good many educators who would benefit from the service. If there is something more one should do to campaign for an invite, could someone let me know in the comments?

I really like your grad school advice story and would like to share it with my students. I’ve been really impressed with the number of different ways I’ve seen people using Storify.

I’d also like to add that I noticed a problem with the FF bookmarklet and wrote to them. Within a week they came up with a fix and notified me of it. They are quite responsive to user feedback.

In fact, @andreazeliner, I wrote to the folks at Storify using the “contact” link at the bottom of their page and explained what kinds of classes I am currently teaching and how Storify would fit into them. They responded within a few days with an invite code for my students.

Wow!

Feel free to use and share.

Thanks for the great post. I’ve sometimes wanted to share tweets from some event on my blog, and while cutting and pasting selected tweets works, Storify looks like a slicker option. Going beyond just tweets takes things to another level. Hmm…

A prof plays a relatively important role in the students’ lives… the prof assigns tasks the student has to do, evaluates the student, and grades the student (and those grades last for a long time in the student’s transcript). It stands to reason that the student would want to get to know the prof well enough to be comfortable. At the same time the prof is probably better served if the students know something about him or her, rather than letting them fill in the blanks for themselves without any actual knowledge. So appropriate use of the social media seems like a win-win. It good to see there is reliable research-based information like this available.

Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net
Twitter.com/arrive2_net

I don’t Tweet or include my students on Facebook. I’d rather maintain strict boundaries between my personal and professional lives, for many reasons. What does that mean? I personally love my work, but I don’t share the details of my weekend. My research might relate to personal experience, but that’s actually not that relevant to their learning the content, in my case.

I’d like students to learn to write paragraphs, not Tweets. I can see the value for a communications class or something directly related to class, but I would use a university-sponsored network instead.

Aren’t there more substantial ways to gain credibility? As professionals, I think we have a good sense of what it means to be credible in our fields, and we should pass this onto our students. I don’t find my colleagues more credible for posting on Facebook, though I care about how they’re doing and find their musings interesting. I find credibility in their teaching and research.

I’m not under any illusions that students really care what I did on my spring break, and I learned early on not to ask about their weekends. (I no longer assign personal journals either–TMI!) By the way, according to evaluations, most students find me friendly and accessible anyway. Class and office hours are enough for me!

Is the expression “open door policy” used any more? If a student, at any age, feels like the instructor has a personal interest in them, I believe that helps with their education. Then there are students who you can give all you have to help them, and you wind up wasting your energy and time.

Knowing more about your student one on one is what I found creates trust, because they feel you care about them. Encouragement and extra time spent with the student usually has a long lasting impact on their self confidence and education. To do that you have to get to know them.

It has been the experience of my students that they regard professors who spend a great deal of their time twitting about themselves are narcissistic, condescending and pretentious. This is what I hear, not what I say.

I have heard the students comment that professors who use a lot of social networking to talk about themselves think everything is about them (the professor.) A lot of them just plain do not care about someones moment by moment announcements of their daily life.

These are just a few of the complaints that I have heard the student comment on about twittering. They have remarked that is seems like you are using a person’s personal life for entertainment. Charlie Sheen seemed to be a common example to explain the “tabloid” effect of “too much information” when asked what they thought about twittering.

My students are liberal art students in a small university too. I find they do need affirmation about their abilities and opportunities to acquire new knowledge. I have a hard time understanding how a student benefits from knowing more about my personal life. I try to encourage them to be more concerned and conscious about their lives and future. Students are clever, and the biggest benefit that I can understand about twittering about myself, is that it gives them insight into how they can “brown nose” me for better grades.

And also – using Twitter the right way is key. If professors are only tweeting about where they are going for lunch, they are missing the point. The value in this is when there is sharing of knowledge. Sure, the quick personal tweets may slip in, but I really use Twitter to stay on top of trends in my industry, following hashtags like #highered and #hemktg. There is even a #prstudchat, where PR pros allot time to answer questions and engage with PR students across the nation/world. It is an incredibly useful tool. It doesn’t replace writing exercises, so I always get miffed when people comment that it’s ruining writing. It’s just a different way of sharing information and meeting like-minded people. My former students are finding jobs and internships via Twitter. For industries like communications, marketing, PR, technology, eCommerce — Twitter is a must. I could go on and on!

Great points, Ken. One of the best thing is that I still get tweets from former students — they share things with me that I think I’d like based on us getting to know each other better. They report “social media successes” to me and one said she landed a job solely because of her experience in my class. That was the best compliment ever – it wasn’t all me – it was that she grasped the tools and learned to use them the right way. I know some of my comments have more to do with after graduation, but it can start in the classroom by following a professor who is a model social citizen. People just have to be open to it. It’s so much about building relationships. My class surveys were impressive – if I did not move out of the area, I know I’d be teaching that class again should they still need an adjunct to offer it.

I’ve been tweeting (both profession and personal stuff) consistently for almost two years. In general I’ve found students aren’t interested in Twitter. It’s not an easily social platform. I’ve even gone as far as to have a social media aspect to my class. However, they love them some facebook.
Perhaps lack of interest is just in the students I’m dealing with in the arts, I dunno.

@millerasbill

Yes, there need to be some boundaries, but just like in business today, we need to stretch those boundaries. Also, you need to remember that my particular class is a Social Media marketing class. I’m teaching them how to use these tools, which can’t be done just within the confines of a 3 hour class in a classroom. they need to immerse themselves.

The fact is, businesses that want to survive are going social, and the same thing is happening in education.

I think that’s where education needs to come in. Facebook and Twitter are totally different. Twitter is way more than talking to people. Within the creative writing/publishing circles in marketing circles, there is an incredible amount of sharing happening. When students realize that potential, many of them will become hooked. I had students follow a company on Twitter and each week, had them blog about the company’s activity, or lack thereof. It was a wonderful exercise. Again, my comment here is going beyond the scope of the article above, but just trying to paint a picture of how valuable Twitter can be in and out of the classroom. Hashtags are fantastic – there are so many great, regular conversations going on that students could be missing out. #prstudchat, #askagent, #submittip, etc. Everyone should give Twitter a real chance and really try to embrace it. Heck, I used it to help me relocate and made like-minded friends before I even started my new job at Elizabethtown College. I blogged about it.

The limitations of this study are pretty clear – especially the small sample size that’s probably not representative of the larger population. Given those limitations, as well as some of the comments already provided, the results should be interpreted and applied with (extreme) caution.

In general I think faculty should be wary of establishing relationships with students outside the context of their courses while they’re still students, particularly on public platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Call me old fashioned, but I believe faculty should be careful of maintaining proper boundaries… I think we’ll see the growth of private social networks, however, which could provide a better, more controlled opportunity for those relationships to develop in contextually-appropriate ways.

Getting back to Twitter, I just published a blog post that relates to some of the ideas conveyed in this piece. It’s called “Unlucky 13? Twitter “Worst Practices” for Rookies (and Others) to Avoid” and can be accessed via http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsTwitterPost. I welcome feedback on my ideas.

Courtney Hunt
Founder, Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community

Although there is a lot of useful expert advice around, I thought the research described in the article was good because it was actual research with actual students rather than opinion. Although the sample was relatively small and came from just one college, and the descriptions of the Tweets used was a little blunt, it seems authentic to me to test the ideas involved with actual students. A number of other variables could come into play however..one that comes to mind is whether the class is a large. In a hundred student class where the prof has little or no one-on-one face time with the majority of students, personalized Tweets might raise the students comfort level with the prof a lot. The prof’s skill level with Twitter, whether this technique is common across the campus, student comfort with and use of Twitter…there are a lot of variable involved, no doubt.

Bernard Schuster
Arrive2.net
Twitter.com/arrive2_net

Very interesting! I will be polling my students this summer on these findings.

Professors With Personal Tweets Get High Credibility Marks
 

Congress could at least restore discharge in bankruptcy to succor the unfortunate, or unlucky.

What is missing in all this discussion are the extreme ramifications of the trickle down effect.  Most of us do not teach at R-1 universities, have huge teaching loads, and still have expectations for research and service.  If the teaching loads for R-1 faculty are raised, it will be all too easy for legislators in my state, as well as the administration of my university, to say that a 4-4 load is not cost-effective enough and we must teach a 5-5.  Many semesters, I teach 300 students with no TAs.   I’m so busy now that I don’t have time to teach the way I really want to and in the manner the students deserve.  And research?–forget about it!

Yes, I started at my campus with a 3-3 load, and I also can do it again — but only for some incentive in return.  How about a raise?  Faculty have had no raises for five years at my R-1 campus.  Discussion of getting us a raise will bring this to a screeching halt with our legislators, believe me.

As for committes, yes, that’s where we’re all cutting back to cope with increased enrollments in loads that remain 2-2 but mean a lot more students.  There’s discussion right now in my college about how to get more faculty on our three standing committees.  There used to be nine committees, but our declining numbers of faculty (and declining budget for adjuncts; thus the need to increase enrollments in remaining courses) led to combining the work of nine committees down to three. 

Brilliant!  You can imagine that the increased workload of committees did not attract more faculty to volunteer, while also coping with more students, and at the same time as declining real income.

It is time to “invest” (with financial aid–tuition discounting) in those students who have the greatest probability of being successful. Why should some student whose family income is low and who has little probability of being successful be given any aid. I don’t invest in stocks that are likely to go bankrupt. I invest in stocks that have a high probability of producing a high rate of return on my investment. Education is no different.

THE ONLY  CRITERIA for financial discounting of tuition should be probability of academic success. This success is not only retention success at the college, but success in the world, and an expectation of those students’ future alumni contributions, bringing  acclaim to the college, recruitment of those applicants’ peers who will also go to the college (and are themselves able to pay the tuition –which pays the bills at the college!) without discounting, and generates a “demand” for admission.

All other criteria are uneconomical in the long and short-run to the college and the nation.

Merit aid can be
interpreted as a ‘weapon in the battle for talent’, or in less severe words- it
is used to shape a class. Universities use merit aid to compete for the students
they want to attend their institution. But, as this article shows, the balance
between ‘need based’ and ‘merit aid’ is becoming lopsided. Less needy students
are getting more. What if there was an alternative to this? What if there were a
product that allowed schools to successfully fight the battle for talent without
giving more aid to the students that don’t necessarily need it? SAGE Tuition
Advantage is a low cost financing option schools can use to counter this effect.
Offering a low cost loan in lieu of some of the merit aid allows the university
to recapture some revenue and recycle it into additional need based awards.

Evergreens certainly have leaves.  Have you ever seen a holly bush?!  We need scientifically literate people.  That is key.  If we had more of that then our population would not be swayed by the superstitious garbage that pervades the regressionists (Republicans)–from supply side economics to creationism.

Another critical thinking skill is to grasp that not all ideas reduce to formal syllogisms, litotes, and enthymemes, or to propositions that can be processed by them.  One can think critically about how various painters saw light but the most important perceptions will probably not reduce to sentences; Beethoven is not found in any written analysis of his work.  Similarly with some topics: arrival at a conclusion would betray, not elucidate, the point.

manoflamancha, it is the coming up with the algorithm that involves real thinking.  Generations of students then memorize the cookbook, turn the crank, approach to solving the problem, without any real understanding, more like a conditioned response.  A few students, in each cohort, understand the algorithm and one or more of them of them might someday come up with a better algorithm.  Meanwhile, the rest probably use a computer package to get the solution, in a slightly more sophisticated fashion than those who use calculators instead of mental arithmetic.

What I consider “critical thinking” is what Copernicus, Kepler, Newton and Einstein did. They overturned orthodoxy, conformity, custom, habit and tradition, while moving us forward in our understanding and our ability to calculate.  Or when someone thinks that Noble Gases, like xenon, can form compounds and provides a theory or creates xenon compounds. Or when someone reads a paper and thinks there is something wrong, eventually leading to the downfall of the great star Jan Hendrik Schön.  Please see some related comments here:

http://chronicle.com/article/Despite-Occasional-Scandals/129997/#comment-379909553

Math and the Physical Sciences are part of the traditional definition of the Liberal Arts, though it does often seem as if the Liberal Arts are reduced to the Humanities. 

The term “critical thinking” seems to have its own meaning in the Humanities or at least in English and seems to be part of a struggle amongst competing agendas, so maybe it is best if we leave the term to them.   Instead, we should consider curiosity, creativity, intuition, inspiration, serendipity, understanding, meaning, openness, “prepared minds” and a willingness to recognize that we have been repeatedly wrong and that orthodoxy and tradition have been repeatedly wrong, as part of our aspirations that we are something more than adjuncts to software in the great adventure, the great quest for better understanding the Universe.

“I’m happy that the computer understands the phenomenon, but I’d like to understand it too.”
“It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”

- Eugene Wigner

“When you show me that result, the computer understands the answer but I don’t think you understand the answer”

- Victor Weisskopf

“The best thing about giving that teaching demonstration last week was
that I was able to show the search committee how flexible I can be in a
somewhat stressful situation, as well as how confident I am in my
abilities in the classroom.”

Yes, sometimes it’s good when something like this happens.

I came prepared for my interview at a Carolina University.  I had emailed my contact and his secretary my full flight and hotel information (numbers and full address).   No one picked me up at the airport.  I took a cab to the Hotel and then was picked up an hour and a half late for dinner because no one read the email I sent.  My hotel was the Big Name Hotel they suggested but there was 3 of them in the downtown and surrounding area. 
 
The next morning I was picked up late. I received my schedule as I sat down to my first round of interviews.  That’s right, I got my schedule 15 min. after I arrived for my interview.  It does not really matter as no one stuck to it.  Two of the four people I was supposed to have personal interviews with I didn’t…. one was out of town and another, as far as I could tell, just didn’t feel like it. I had a great laugh with the directing teacher who was willing to meet with me despite him not being on the schedule. We joked about summer stock theatres we had worked at which were more organized than the University.
 
I got dumped in the costume shop where I sat for about 40 minutes doing nothing.  Despite the email I sent a week before I arrived saying that I needed about 20 min. to set up for my lecture before the students showed up, I was lead into the lecture hall that was empty except for the interview committee and was told they would be the only ones there and I could start my lecture right away.  No time to set up and no access to the overhead projector, which I had asked for, hence my electronic notes that were only supposed to be seen on my computer screen could not be switched around. I had to turn off my notes.  The Professor of Dance, for all of her conditioning of how the human body conveys emotion and tells a story, could only tell me she wanted to be anywhere but where she was.    
 
I have never had such a horrible interview experience in all my life.  I went home and crashed for 2 days as keeping calm and collected as much as I could though the ordeal stressed me out. I agree with 609zr, if the interview committee is rude, incompetent, etc.before or during the interview, then you do not want to know these people on a daily basis.

How about  being put up in a student dorm where I was advised not to walk outside after dark by the security guard at the door due to the real risk of a mugging.  This was followed by a drive to dinner through a sea of porn shops and “adult clubs” .  The topper was sitting down to dinner with the department chair, associate chair and dean who proceeded to get into a heated argument whether the criteria for tenure were the same as those at the highly ranked “main campus” of this major university system or took into account the high teaching load, challenging student population, and lack of research resources found at this branch campus.

At a later meeting with said Dean where he confirmed that the “start up” research resources were abysmal and also confirmed that the criteria for tenure were the same as for faculty at the main campus who had 1/4 the teaching load and 7 fold the start up package.  By this point, I had had it and told this dean that while I would be interested in a teaching intensive position and working with the large population of first generation college students at this school, t he was out of his mind if at the same time the expectations for scholarship at promotion were the same as for faculty at the R1 ranked main campus.  I wonder why I never got a call back for a second visit on this one…….. 

Do you have a job yet?

I think you gave up an excellent opportunity to show your poise and grace when dealing with a busy person who was probably quite embarrassed at his or her mistake. We’re all human — we misfile things, we make mistakes, and we aren’t all thinking solely about you all day. This stuff, while unfortunate, happens. I can’t imagine throwing a hissyfit and storming out of someone’s office because they accidentally picked up the wrong sheet of paper.

It certainly wasn’t the President’s fault; a member of the search committee or an admin person or whoever messed this one up.  Geez…you’re bitter.  Keep us posted on how your taxi advice is working out for you.

 Amazing isn’t it.

 When you see this kind of behavior, realize that they have an inside candidate. You are just being brought in to ‘prove’ that their person was the correct choice. So why would they try to make your visit a success. There is a reason for my name. :-)