Entrepreneurial Teaching » opportunity aware

Using Twitter as an Opportunity in Class

Lucas Ames — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:28:46 +0000

I recently wrote about being an ‘opportunity aware’ teacher and why I think it’s important in classrooms. One opportunity that came to me only after the Whipple Hill User Conference in Boston was that of Twitter. I am a very ‘tech forward’ teacher, but ironically have been a staunch hold out of Facebook and consistent basher of all things Twitter. Needless to say I am now a Twitter convert (though not Facebook).

So here are some of the Twitter-related opportunities I see (for me personally):

1) all students can now carry cell phones in school
2) we’re going 1-to-1 (macbooks) in 2010-2011
3) students spend an incessant amount of time on their mobile devices and home computers.
4) Twitter offers a unique platform to aggregate different parts of the internet
5) Twitter is simple, instantly gratifying, and can be used from many different interfaces (all important to students).

I am sure that there are more, but this is what came to me at first. So the question became how can I use Twitter to enhance my classroom experience or, if I was an entrepreneur, how do I take advantage of this opportunity to add value for my customer?

Given my excitement over this opportunity, I turned to our first unit in US History. The US History curriculum (non AP) at our school starts with the present day first and then begins with pre-colonial North America. This approach allows our team to highlight the key historical trends that we will be discussing all year with news stories that are happening today. It provides a nice level of relevancy that the students carry with them throughout the year. Usually, as a team, we put together a plethora of news stories to make a little primer for the two-week unit.

I currently have two ideas for extending this unit, one short term and one long term.

1) short term: cut back on the number of stories that we ‘give out’ and let the students find them on their own and make brief comments through Twitter. Use the stories and comments to facilitate our classroom discussion. Allow, temporarily, to use cell phones (or if they are using a laptop) in class to Tweet thoughts on our discussion as we go along (that maybe we didn’t get to or didn’t want to say out loud).

2) long term: request that every student for each chapter highlight one (two?) of the key themes and then find current events stories addressing that theme. After finding the stories they obviously have to tweet about them with a comment. Once a month we can come together to discuss parallels, lessons learned, emotions, etc. Each section already has a ‘note buddy’ that is responsible for taking good notes and posting them online. I am considering making a Twitter buddy to aggregate the postings per section into a mini ‘report’ for us to use during these discussions.

Just wanted to share a practical way I am trying to take advantage of an opportunity in my school.

Being ‘Opportunity Aware’ as a Teacher

Lucas Ames — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:56:59 +0000

As an entrepreneur, you’re almost unconsciously on the hunt for new opportunities. An almost cliché refrain in entrepreneur circles is “where others see problems, entrepreneurs see opportunities.” After all, successful business development stems not just from a great idea, but also a great opportunity. For entrepreneurs this can take many forms: fulfilling an unmet need, leveraging popular trends, improving on an existing product or service, or inventing a new product or service. I often discussed taking advantage of trends with high school entrepreneurs; the iPod trend really resonated with teenagers. Think of the myriad businesses that have either a) leveraged the trend of the iPod or b) created a whole new business centered on the tremendous use of the iPod. This proved to be a really instructive example for my students. Prior to attaching ‘opportunity’ to entrepreneurship, students simply thought creating a business centered on having an idea. “I want to start a club because I like going to the club” or “I like fashion so I want to design custom t-shirts.” The key was to get them to understand that the strongest businesses come not just from an idea, but an idea that is paired with an opportunity.

As teachers we can follow many of the same entrepreneurial maxims to make our classrooms a better place. When planning a lesson, or even a unit, are we simply planning based on our ideas or are we using both ideas and opportunities. Can we pair our ideas with a ‘hot trend’? Does our lesson fulfill an unmet need (perhaps a learning style or skill we’ve been neglecting)? Have we invented something new in this lesson or unit that uses our unique knowledge of this specific class or are we using ‘stock’ material? You get the picture…

The paragraph above represents taking advantage of opportunity in the ‘planning phase’ of class, but there is a much harder time to take advantage of opportunity: in the class itself, on the fly. Obviously, this requires a dynamic mindset permitting us to veer off course. I struggle with this almost everyday. I would come prepared to class with (what I thought) an amazing lesson plan, only to see the class get hooked on a theme that was merely tangential to my plan. As someone who is pretty ‘opportunity aware’ this would be both frustrating and exciting. Sometimes I would do nothing with that insight except file it away. Other times I would immediately leverage this opportunity and use this insight to reach my objectives for the rest of the unit. I recognize that, as teachers, we cannot take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself in class, but being ‘opportunity aware’ can mean a tremendous amount, if only for being a ‘tuned in’ teacher. I finally realized that whether or not I stuck with my plan, the class or student was implicitly telling me something about how they learn (and what they wanted to learn about).