1. Brevity is the Soul of
(t)Wit
Using Twitter to Role-Play the Classics
2. Overview
• The experiment
• What we learned
• How my class used Twitter
• What did it let us do that we couldn’t do
before?
3.
4. The Experiment
• Can we use Twitter to role-play Hamlet in
real time?
• What would we learn if we tried it?
• What is the value of trying this in the
classroom?
13. Start with a big idea
Technology doesn’t necessarily = engagement
"What is the value in re-imagining a
text using social media?”
14. Be the Director
Set up the Twitter accounts yourself
not so much for policing but so you can
see all the planning that happens through
direct messages.
An email account is necessary to set up a
Twitter account, but I’ve found a good
workaround is to use variations on a
gmail address such as yourname
+student1@gmail.com.
15. Lists
Create a list and add all the character handles to the list.
This way people can follow a list rather than each
character:
eg/ https://twitter.com/danikabarker/brevity-2-0
If you put all your students on a list, it’s easy to curate the
tweets using something like Storify.
16.
17. When? Where? How
Often?
•Tweeting as a reading strategy:
•“As we read this act, think about how the
events affect your character. How will you reflect
on these events? Who would you talk to?”
•The discussions students had prior to tweeting
were the most valuable part of the whole
process.
18. When? Where? How
Often?
•Tweeting happened mostly in class, towards the
end of a period, once or twice a week. The next
day we’d begin class by reading through the
tweets and discussing them.
19. When? Where? How
Often?
•BYOD
•Students don’t all need cell phones. Most
students seemed to prefer the web based
version of Twitter and used either a personal
laptop, or (more often) one of our school
netbooks. Students were in partners so we
didn’t need 1:1.
21. Don’t grade this.
Not everything we do as teachers needs to be
graded, although this is sometimes a tough sell for
students. Assess, and have the students reflect but
the second you tell students they’re being graded, it
raises the level of anxiety and puts a stop to
creativity and playfulness, especially when trying
something new.
22. Links
• Brevity is the Soul of • Create a fake newspaper
(t)Wit website
• Corkboard
• Brevity Blog
• Wallwisher
• Such Tweet Sorrow
website • Storify
• My presentation on
Twitter
• Brevity Twitter List
