Wednesday, November 20, 2013

EDU 720 Discussion Director Reflection

This past week I had the opportunity to serve as the discussion director for course EDU 720.  The topic for the discussion was social media and the participants were asked to read and watch the following articles and video:
Chapter 36 - Handbook of Research of New Literacy
Social Privacy in Networked Publics:Teens' Attitudes, Practices and Strategies
Christine Greenhow

Initially, I was nervous about serving as discussion director.  Everyone who served in the role before me did such a wonderful job, I was afraid that my assignment would not be educational or interesting enough to receive positive participation.  What I did not expect though was for the assignment to greater further my understanding of the topic.

For the assignment I asked everyone to provide their takeaways on two of the three readings and to connect their takeaways to song titles.  The song title idea came from a part of the Chapter 36 reading where one of the study participants mentioned how him and his friend had an entire IM conversation using song titles.  I thought it would be interesting to see what songs people would pick to summarize the resources that they were assigned to read/watch.

In addition, I wanted to utilize a new website that I found that could be used in a classroom to encourage online conversations between students.  I asked the participants to put their response in  Twiducate under a class that I created.  The site allowed all of the users to view each other's responses and provided them an opportunity to comment on other's entries as well.

I admit that each time I received an email saying there was a new posting, I was so excited to see what song titles people selected and what their takeaways were from the readings and video.  Not only were the posts interesting, but they also allowed me to continually think about the topic of social media and how it could be used within classrooms and with youths today.

As I reflected on the posts and this week's discussion, I took the song titles that everyone shared and put them together in groups based on each resource.  When I did this I realized that everyone truly took this assignment to heart and attempted to find the most perfect song title to make the connection that they were looking for in their responses.   It was a creative way for each person to not only share their opinions differently, but also a way to summarize the resources with using only a few words.  I found it interesting that so many of the songs were similar to each other and even one person even commented that someone else took the song they were thinking of using.

Below is a list of the song titles chosen for each resource:

Chapter 36 of the Handbook:
     -  Who Are You?
     -  Rumour Has It
     -  Come As You Are
     -  Decode

Christine Greenhow Video:
     -  Imagine
     -  Power to the People
     -  Don't Stop
     -  Changes
     -  Daft Punk
     -  For What It's Worth
     -  With a Little Help From My Friends

Social Privacy in Networked Publics:
     -  Parents Just Don't Understand
     -  None of Your Business
      -  Eye In the Sky
      -  Private Eyes
      -  Every Breath You Take

Songs used to describe all of the resources:
    -  A Social Network for Two: A Modern Love Song
     -  Where Do Children Play?

Overall I felt the discussion went very well.  When completing the grading rubrics for each person, I felt as if I had so much to write about what they had to say.  I was extremely pleased with the responses by everyone and could not have asked for a better group of participants!

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