Integrating Social Networking

I have a weekly current event assignment that my students must complete. They must read one national news article and one international news article. Then, they fill out a worksheet that requires them to analyze and summarize the content. This is all due every Friday. They usually whine about it because they forget, they lose the worksheet, or they don't know where to look or how to search through everything.

I figured I could fit Twitter into this. I'm actually semi-copying what we have been doing in this class (and what I have done for other classes). I would still have students fill out the worksheet, but I would make it a digital version on their Google Classroom. THEN (and this is the new/exciting part), students would need to find that online article and tweet it. They could use an existing Twitter handle, or they could create a completely new one just for the class (I have two Twitter handles, and it's incredibly easy to switch between the two). They would have to retweet with a question attached to it for their classmates to respond to. They would also need to attach a specified hashtag, like #cefrancis so that I could quickly find and check that they tweeted. Students would also be responsible for responding to the question attached to someone else's article-Tweet with the hastag #ceresponse, so I could keep track of responses too. The Twitter idea would allow students to interact with content on a platform that they understand and is easily accessible, plus they would be reading more than just two articles every week. It seems like a win-win to me!

I might make the current events themselves due every other week and students respond to 2-4 classmates on the off-weeks, so it doesn't get out of hand for them and for me.

Here is the link for the current event worksheet that I use.

Here is an example tweet: (I know it's an infographic and not an article, but it is still worthwhile)

Goals: TSW read and respond to multiple non-fiction articles dealing with current events.

           TSW use technology to access information

            TSW identify relevant and factual information.

I'm going to think a little bit more about the logistics of this and how realistic it is that I could keep up with the grading, but I would really like to do this.