The tweets and retweets would begin circling around the school and eventually #HaslamHeadlines was trending. I figured that if journalism students could have fun with this, my English students could too. I turned the activity into a number of options for English 12 assignments; my favorite being a summary-of-the-reading headline tweet used as an exit slip. We also took the activity to Creative Writing 1, where students would tweet examples of figurative language as we learned them and eventually small poems like haikus.
The hashtag #HaslamHeadlines became popular enough around the school, that it was being used randomly for tweets or activities. An activity could include an inconspicuous journalism teacher trying to show some school spirit...
Or they might have included a school-wide anti-bullying campaign that had students tweeting random students compliments instead of the usual negativity that students see on Twitter.
Or finally, a #Hewhomustnotbenamed English teacher trying to show his support for a student running for class office (during the Beowulf final).
I started a discussion with another fellow in one of the ASNEChat forums about the 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' mantra. This teacher had discussed how they might begin the use of Snapchat in her classroom. I feel like using Snapchat would be too low for me to go personally. How do others feel? Are there other apps being used for news that take it too far?
Steve Haslam
Copper Hills High School
West Jordan, Utah
We did run into the issue of Mr. Haslam as the governor-elect of Tennessee. Local Tennessee reporters had begun using the same hashtag. Can I claim a patent on my hashtag? (I'm joking)
ReplyDeleteI play games with my students to get them to understand the difference between a sentence and a headline. We create things that could happen or have happened and talk in headlines. Me: Teacher crushed by wobbly bookcase Them: More caught by tardy centers Me: Students defy dress code.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea. Have you seen Jimmy Kimmel's "Mean Tweets," which has celebrities reading mean things people tweet about them. It's hilarious and highlights how stupid people get on social media. Here's the president doing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDocnbkHjhI.
ReplyDeleteSteve Elliott
Arizona State University
Phoenix
Thank you for sharing! I love your idea and started to jump on the hashtag bandwagon myself this year (even though I just created my Twitter account last week!) Like you said, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! The 9th grade English team morphed our hallway into Animal Farm tweets to spread our propaganda #napoleonisevil and then continued with our Shakespeare unit. I never understood the Twitter stuff until earlier this year.
ReplyDeleteSharon Fonzo
Poston Butte HS
San Tan Valley, Arizona
Thank you for sharing! I love your idea and started to jump on the hashtag bandwagon myself this year (even though I just created my Twitter account last week!) Like you said, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! The 9th grade English team morphed our hallway into Animal Farm tweets to spread our propaganda #napoleonisevil and then continued with our Shakespeare unit. I never understood the Twitter stuff until earlier this year.
ReplyDeleteSharon Fonzo
Poston Butte HS
San Tan Valley, Arizona
This was the first year I really started using a hashtag with my regular classes, and we actually had a little fun with it and I was able to use it as a teaching tool as well. It seems that you do exactly that, Steve. What I learned from your post is that if you can get the kids talking, they'll check out your Twitter feed and look up that hashtag, which you can then use for more serious purposes as well if you want to. I'm going to make this a goal of mine for the coming school year!
ReplyDeleteKeith Carlson
Naperville Central High School
Naperville, Ill.