I FACE A BACKLASH inside Facebook for mooting the idea of awarding academic credit to students who use Twitter effectively. In both my Facebook tribe and in discussions with academic peers, people "fail to see the academic merit in" awarding third level continuous assessment credit for those who tweet. Moreover, several voices I respect believe Twitter does not deserve to be elevated to a job-winning status--insinuating that tweeting well does not translate into a job skill that prospective employers would seek to endorse. Along the margins, I hear others who have leveraged Twitter for "connecting to nixers" and several colleagues believe "well-formed sentences are the essence of attention-grabbing subject lines" as well as being one of the foremost reasons why newspapers sell at the counter. I respect those who read and comment on my Facebook page, so I'm not going to risk their wrath by revealing how I integrate Twitter in my academic curriculum. I'll let my students do that on their own Facebook pages. As for the strategic goal of using new forms of communications technology, I sincerely believe we owe it to the Irish taxpayer to unpack and refit creative problem solving approaches because we've less to lose when we control communication technologies in our academic environment. And if I do it right, I suspect I will be able to point to several dozen first year students who can elegantly use microblogging technologies for best effect. If they cop onto the core skillset, they will emerge as effective communicators and no one will know they got dirty in the twitterverse.
Artwork by Katie Conway, a Tipperary Institute graduate. Post inspired by Niall O'Brien, Paul Sweeney, Gareth Stack, and Liam Burke.
