We will use Twitter to publicly share thoughts about the class. If you don’t already have an account, sign up here. This article by Anne Trubek gives a primer on Twitter’s uses for scholarly and professional purposes.
I will ask you for your username in the first week so that I can keep track and follow you (I am @alothian on Twitter). Whether to use your legal name or a different name is up to you; we’ll talk about why you might make each choice in class. If you tweet frequently on a personal account and want to use it for class, bear in mind that sharing that ID means I will be able to read all of your posts…
We will use the hashtag #dcc106 to tweet for class. You can get up to 25 points for tweeting; one point per tweet, up to the last day of class. Students in other sections of 106 may also be tweeting and reading the hashtag: this is your opportunity to tell them about our class.
Tweets can be:
• summaries of readings or in-class discussion
• quotations of important points from readings (include the link)
• links to related material you have found online
• personal thoughts on what we have been talking about
• retweets of course-related content (make sure to include the hashtag)
• replies to your classmates
Retweets of your classmates’ tweets are encouraged, but won’t give you extra points!
Think before you tweet: Twitter is public, sometimes very public, and your posts may be found by anyone searching for the subjects you are tweeting about. If you get retweeted, your words could be seen by an audience of thousands. Before you tweet one of your classmates’ comments, make sure to get their permission and ask how they would like to be identified. If you get unexpected or worrying responses to anything you tweet, bring it up in class or come talk to me about it in office hours.
I have the same expectations for class-related Twitter posts as I do for in-class discussion. Insults or hateful language on the Twitter stream will be treated the same way as if you had yelled them out in class: as serious verbal abuse.