Sunday, November 30, 2008

Twitter role play exercises?

I was contemplating today the idea of using twitter as a role playing environment for education. In this scenario, which I'm sure others have talked about (but right now I'm too lazy to search for), you would assign students take on say, historical or fictional figures in twitter, based around some event such as Watergate or the Battle of Waterloo or Shakespeare. Each student would then be responsible for researching the time line for that event and how their assigned persona fits into it. They would then each tweet imaginatively about their view of that event as it unfolds around them; as how they imagine that person might view things.

An example of this, although based around a fictional television-based world, are those who tweet as various Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters.

I have no idea if such an exercise would work, but I'm intrigued by the possibility.

3 comments:

Dean Michaud said...

This is a really slick idea, Dana. I think it could work, if the students can really get into the heads of the characters of whom that are role playing.

I don't know if you actually follow the Scoobies on Twitter, but they really do a bang-up job - they have a knack of tweeting just the right content, Twitter-style, and still manage to portray the TV episodes and the character’s daily lives.

I say give your role playing Twitter idea a test run - it could prove to be an interesting project for you and the students! :)

Rachael said...

This sounds interesting! Have you tried it since posting this? I'd consider looking into sociometry...

http://lowndeslibforeverfree.wordpress.com/ (see Feb 12)

http://www.thelincolnproject.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociometry

Unknown said...

Thanks to both of you for your comments. I have not yet had an opportunity to try such a project using Twitter, but will hopefully in the future get the opportunity to do so. Are either of you doing anything similar, or do you know of someone who is? I would think assessing such an assignment would be the ahrdest thing, along with motivating the students to put the work in to do it successfully.