Thou Shalt Tweet: Because I SAID so

Below is a response I wrote to a student’s blog post questioning the validity of Twitter (a question I believe is crucial!!) Her sense was, what’s the big deal?

In trying to explain the big deal, I tried below to engage her in the larger question of being open to all of the new media technocrapology flying at us. We have to know it exists, learn how to use it, find out its role in industry, decide if it does anything for is in our personal/professional lives, and once we’ve figured that all out, either use it or chuck it. Then get back up and wait for the Next New Thing to whiz by us and start all over again. That’s just the deal, and part of the fun. If it’s not fun – or funnISH, well, that’s another challenge. “This seems stupid” lets us off the hook in a way that I want my students to push through. Even if it is stupid.

Your critical eye and suspicion about new media technologies is a good instinct…I have it too. I think it’s important to strike a balance between being critical and being curious.

If all the big shots are using Twitter, and it is having an impact on global disasters, it’s something we must at least know about. That’s the deal with new media. Stuff erupts, you must become familiar enough with it to decide whether or not it works for your life…but you still have to know what it is, what it does, and why folks love/hate it. Especially if you want to be a broadcaster, your future will be full of these kinds of technologies. You’ll need to be open to the stupidest of them, and then decide for yourself what the possibilities might be.

I present this stuff as it comes at us. Don’t mistake me educating you with me trying to convince you of something’s worth. The worth is in the exploration and information.

Okay, so obviously I really liked that blog post because it engaged me, forced me to think and apparently required me to respond in detail. THAT’s a great post! I’d like to see you pushing yourself more to write more and really use the blog to the fullest potential you can.

Your career goals require you to be an expert in all of the forms I’m presenting, so if that’s what you’re wanting, take full advantage of the class to get yourself in a marketable, educated position for hiring. I’m so glad the Globe photo spread made an impression on you. As I keep saying, the most powerful way I can teach you all of this is to share examples and people who are doing great work. Describing a great photo essay to you is, well, not anywhere near as useful as having you explore and engage with one on your own. Okay, so push harder – in class, in your blog.

 

Are you a Twit (terer)?

A student of mine is writing a story about Twitter on campus for another class. I thought his questions — and hopefully my answers — were worth a blog post:

1) What’s your official title at Oregon State University? What name would you like to be referred by in the article? What’s your age? Finally, how long have you been teaching?

ANSWER: I’m an Instructor in NMC at OSU. Pamela Cytrynbaum. Second reference is always “Cytrynbaum.” I’m 43. I’ve been teaching in one form or another for 12 years.

Now onto our subject.

2) Do you think Twitter is widely used by students on campus? Have you encountered Twitter in any of your classrooms (as an interruption or distraction, perhaps)?

ANSWER: No, I don’t see much use of Twitter on campus at all. In fact, I’ve been surprised at how few students have even heard of it when I raise the question in all of my classes. Very few of my my students — most of whom are new media students — use it. I require my NMC 301 (Writing for the Media Professional) students to learn it and do one assignment where they Twitter an event. It’s important for them to know what it is and how to use it. Once that’s done, it’s up to them to continue or not. Some do.

I think it seems useless to many students. They’ve got texts and Facebook messages coming in…what do they need this shortened social networking tool for? Far fewer students seem to continue on with Twitter after learning it in class than with blogging. I have many students who blog for the first time in my class and then get hooked and build their blogs and keep them going. They see the value in that. I’m not sure Twitter offers enough payoff for the effort. For me, I’ve had lots of fun with it. I use it as storage for all kinds of links I want to keep for classes, to connect with organizations, media outlets, friends, writers, to keep up with their lives and work. I don’t follow anybody who uses Twitter to proclaim an ingrown toenail. I’m looking for actual information.

I’m a working, writing mom. I don’t have one second in the day to waste on that.

3) Do you think Twitter has any potential as a teaching aid? In your opinion, should teachers or campus officials use Twitter to spread information to students?

ANSWER: I can’t speak for any other teachers or tell them what to do. I know from being a Twitter Follower of the Chronicle of Higher Education (and a regular reader) that there are lots of professors arguing for and against the use of Twitter. One story I read was by someone advocating the use of Twitter DURING classes and conference lectures as a way to INCREASE engagement.

Personally, I’d lose my mind juggling that. I’d rather have somebody comment in person so I can see them, hear them, respond one human being to another. But this person argued strongly that for them, Twittering deeply enriched the teaching experience. It’s important to take it seriously, though, and not just ignore or disregard Twitter. There are plenty of stories and surveys that have found Twitter is the top social networking medium for helping people get immediate information on natural disasters, like the Indonesian Tsunami. But, as we’ve seen just yesterday in the news about the swine flu issue, it’s also a mechanism for spreading false or overly-hyped information that can be deeply concerning. Either way, it’s here, and the larger plugged-in world is taking advantage of this technology. We need to check it out for ourselves and make our own choices.

 

Why Plagiarism Sucks

Eight Reasons Plagiarism Sucks
It harms readers, in its heart beats a lie, it corrupts, and five more.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, March 7, 2008

http://www.slate.com/id/2186029/

* APRIL 15, 2009, 10:47 P.M. ET

Bookshelf – Wall Street Journal
It’s Not Theft, It’s Pastiche
College students plagiarize routinely, especially from the Internet.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984974506823779.html

Cut and Paste 101
Have we created a generation of plagiarists?
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:_TS1HZtsDG0J:nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/pages/stress-r/Docs/Website%2520Articles/Cheating/Renard%2520-%2520Cheating.pdf+Cut+and+Paste+is+the+enemy&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

From 10,000 Words:

Copy and paste: The enemy of the web?

Friday, December 05, 2008

As a police reporter at the Daytona Beach News-Journal, I gradually became accustomed to local evening news anchors reading my well-researched reports verbatim with no credit. When I made the transition to interactive journalism, copyright infringement became less of a problem as whole multimedia stories are a little harder to lift.

The familiar frustration was brought back in an instant when I discovered, via Technorati, that someone had plagiarized an entire post and its images. While the offending post has since been removed, it did call to question what writers, bloggers and photographers should do when they discover someone else is presenting content as their own.

My initial reaction was to turn to the Twitterverse because, as this post suggests, Twitter is great for asking questions. While waiting for responses, a quick Google search turned up this post on what to do when someone steals your content.

************************************

Katy Weaver. She is editor of the school newspaper, The Barometer wrote this article as a final class project for NMC 301 Writing for the Media Professional.

The full article can be read online here:

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2009/03/10/News/A.Temptation.To.Cheat-3666700.shtml

A temptation to cheat

Most academic dishonesty occurs through plagiarism, but also includes cheating, fabrication, assisting and tampering

Katy Weaver

Issue date: 3/10/09 Section: News

The few sentences on every class syllabus at the beginning of the term can seem forgettable when it’s 3 a.m. the night before a term paper is due. Copy and paste commands are literally clicks away. A few accidentally non-cited sources could push the word count into the professor’s zone of requirement.Plagiarism is a temptation. However, it is also something that students and professors are feeling increasingly concerned about as the internet grows and media resources change.”

***************************************************************************

Check out Lisa Renard’s excellent piece, “Cut and Paste 101: Plagiarism and the Net,” where she explores the impact of new media on teaching and learning, offers a “field guide” on “Internet Cheaters” and identifies “three main types” of internet cheaters.

http://nhs.needham.k12.ma.us/pages/stress-r/Docs/Website%20Articles/Cheating

.

I

 

On newspaper death and dying

For my students… Readings, questions on the life, death and structure of newsrooms in the age of new media….

Here are some excellent articles, blog posts, websites, etc… that offer a variety of perspectives and discussions about the structure of newsrooms, who does what, what changes are needed to remake the traditional reporting structures into new media models. Take a look and see what sparks your interest.

These are just a few examples of hundreds of interesting articles, posts, etc… written about the transformation of newspapers and print media into the digital age. It’s a crucial part of any discussion or class on reporting. Where will we do this reporting and how must it change? MUST it change? What is lost in the new media model? What is gained? WHO is a “real” reporter these days? Are bloggers reporters? What skills are now required? What should we value or require to trust those gathering information?

Mon, Apr 13, 2009 — News without newspapers
Interesting story in the Media section of The New York Times today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers
“By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and BRAD STONE
Published: April 12, 2009

http://www.journalism.org/node/11961

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/nichols_mcchesney

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/2008/narrative_newspapers_intro.php?cat=0&media=4

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/090328-181359

http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/archives
/000405.html http://www.megantaylor.org/wordpress/2008/04/04/convergence-and-newsroom-structure/

http://newsvideographer.com/2008/03/06/down-with-the-traditional-newsroom-structure/

 

Flutter is the new Twitter??

Twitter is SO last week!

Flutter is the new Twitter!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeLZCy-_m3s

 

Midlife New Media: Why I LOVE LOVE LOVE Facebook – The Human Time Capsule for Gals in Their 40s Who Loved High School

This is why I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Facebook. Seriously. It makes me cry all the time.

I was searching for people from my high school and the name of this guy popped up. He was a great person, very friendly and decent and fun to be around. So I Friended him. I didn’t even know if he would remember me!! But I loved high school and he had a warm smile and I remember him so well that I gave it a shot.

Below is the note I got back. I mean, I know Facebook serves lots of daily, mundane, plan-making, time-wasting, insipid purposes for those 20 and under. But for those of us in our 40s, at least for THIS old broad in her 40s, Facebook is like a human time capsule reconnecting me with my favorite parts of my life and the wonderful people from those times.

I just got Friended by a girl who was my bestest friend when I was in 2nd grade. My daughter can’t believe I was ever her actual age AND that I had friends! Old neighbors, colleagues; these are not mere social networky associations. Many of these peoples’ faces and names alone make me burst into tears.

I am so moved and happy to reconnect with them and our connection — new media freaky-deaky as it is — is genuine and important. Why wouldn’t I have called them or searched for them? That’s another post. But for now, read the note below from my Facebook wall, and know that I’m still crying about the sweetness of an old friend from high school teaching his daughter life’s big lessons.

My wife and I were sitting at dinner when my Blackberry went off with the notification from Facebook with your friend request. When I told my wife you had sent me a friend request, she said, “How do I know that name?” And I reminded her of how I told my daughter (and her) about you when she was in first grade, about 10 years ago or so.

As she started school we were telling her to be nice and kind to people and I used you as an example of one of the nicest, kindest, smartest and prettiest girls in high school and I hoped she grew up to be just like you. And she has. The funny thing is that she also is considering journalism!

I see you are in Oregon…were you with the Tribune at some point? I think I remember seeing your byline sometime when we were in Chicago.

Your daughter is adorable. Hope you are well.

David

9:08pm · See Wall-to-Wall

 

Must I write “No Sexting” on my syllabus? OR, When Good Media Goes Bad

Students Sue Prosector in Cellphone Photos Case – NYTimes.com

Source: www.nytimes.com

When a high school cheerleader in northeastern Pennsylvania learned that she might face criminal charges after investigators reported finding a nude photo of her on someone else’s cellphone, she was more confused than frightened at being caught up in a case of “sexting”: the increasingly popular phenomenon of nude or seminude photos sent over wireless phones.

Almost unheard of a year or two ago, cases related to “sexting,” nude or seminude photos sent over wireless phones, are popping up all over the country.

What are the rules of the pedagogical road, here, in yet another bizarre exit on the New Media Super Highway?

Okay, like I don’t have enough to worry about trying to plan my New Media courses, which require relentless Twitter-like updating because so much happens every single minute. So I’m reconfiguring my language on the syllabus (again) about plagiarism to keep widening and deepening and broadening the big new media tent that it has become. (Post on that coming soon)

Next I come to the section on student conduct and appropriate classroom behavior to create an environment most conducive to learning with 77-82 students in a class.  I’m about discussion, engagement, exchange, not lecture alone…the bank deposit method where I have “The Knowledge” and you open your brain, receive it, vomit it back to me and I reward you for the reminder of my genius. Maybe it’s that I’m so confident in what I know and how crucial it is, that I’m comfortable with a conversation.  They teach me. I teach them.

Normally that happens and for the most part, my students end up feeling smarter and happier for having taken my class. Not all, of course, by any means. There are plenty for whom my style, the topic, my hair,  whatever, is simply enraging or whatever.  With new media, though, there are new implications. With new implications, come new lines on my syllabus. Like the one I’m putting on all my syllabi this term for the first time about how recording someone without their knowledge or consent is a Class A Misdemeanor in Oregon. If a student has a disability, that’s an entirely different set of rules. We will come to an agreement where all parties are made aware that recording is happening for this educational purpose.

But for the record, college students: In most states, it’s a crime to use any device to record someone without their knowledge or consent.  I hope to have a longer and more specific post on that soon as well.

I ask students to post photos of themselves with brief bios on our Blackboard discussion forum so I can start to learn their 77 or 82 names (I do that with my 27-person classes as well.) Many inevitably post photos from their Facebook pages: tube dresses made of yellow  police “CAUTION” tape, shots of body parts I don’t want to be able to identify in various stages of undress, dance moves that would make Elvis blush, a menagerie of images that, in the end, will not help me learn their names because their faces are smushed beneath ski caps, intertwinted with other faces or something else….you know the drill.

I show their posted photos and we do the “giggle test.” If your photo makes the class giggle, it’s not appropriate and would not make a potential employer giggle and it shouldn’t be on Facebook. I put that under “professionalism.”

There’s the usual no texting or Facebooking or im-ming in class unless I give you an assignment. And yes, I ask my students to commit various forms of new media during class.  A great way to bust them Facebooking in class is to get them to Friend you, and then during class when they have laptpos clacking away, just get on your Facebook page and see who else is on live. The kids LOVE that trick. Makes me seem very New Media hip. Once, when my students had a reporting assignment out of class and were supposed to be Twittering in from the field, one student didn’t come back to class. On the screen in front of the rest of the group I sent him a note on Facebook and Twitter — “Where are you? We’re all in the classroom waiting for you.” He wrote back and soon the door opened.

This is all appropriate and on point because these are New Media classes where we talk directly about the use, abuse, impact, relevance, dangers, emergence, transformation of new media in all forms. Plus I love playing with this stuff.

Now a new entry on the syllabus and in the Rules of the Road first-class talk. No sexting. Do I really have to say this? The New York Times says they’re sending naked pictures to each other in high school. In my 101 Intro to New Media class, most of the 77 or 82 students are in their first year of college. In fall term, the last school experience they had WAS high school.

Add this to my list. It’s child pornography and it’s a crime.

Remember when the most heinous crime we addressed in writing classes was the misplaced modifier?

 

A little nattering of negativity, anyone? Or: Possible Perils of New Media Model Mishmashing

Dan Reimold wrote a spot-on post on College Media Matters today, focusing on the potential perils and pitfalls of some of the new models for new media. I want it all to be great. I want these new ways of publishing to be fair and free and push democracy to new heights. But, (enter the nattering nabobs of negativity) but Reimold and others raise just the questions we all should be asking as we push ahead.

New Student Site: One-Stop Shop or Pretend Journalism?

I’m ambivalent.  Here’s the deal: The Philadelphia Inquirer has announced it is launching a new Web site aimed at providing a platform for the journalistic and creative work of college students throughout the Philly area, according to a new report in The Hawk at Saint Joseph’s University.  News reports, op-eds, blogs, photos, even fiction pieces are all fair game for the soon-to-be-active site, which apparently will feature dedicated areas for each school involved.

–

If the idea actually works, I envision an interesting mishmash of a site that might draw students in occasionally to see what their peers are passionately espousing or creatively vetting.  If the idea flounders, it will join the ranks of the growing number of what I’ve started calling pretend journalism sites, pseudo-professional outlets that seem more just for their creators to have a place to publish and not for the audience to actually have something worth reading or watching.

—

The question I am left with that makes me cynical about this particular venture: What does it *really* offer average students that their campus newspapers, the blogosphere, Facebook, and other area outlets do not already provide?  Sure, a one-stop shop for all types of content can be convenient, or it can come across like an overwhelming, inexplicable campus graffiti wall.

 

You Must All Listen to This News Guy’s Lament (The Layoff Song)

Here’s Christopher Ave’s entire post with his amazingly heartbreaking, heartwarming, and heartattackingly great song. You HAVE to listen to it and then run, don’t walk, to his blog and give him  a big smooch. This song ruined — and made — my day:

http://www.musicformediaproductions.com/samples

Copy Editor’s Lament (The Layoff Song)

By Christopher Ave

Copy Editor’s Lament (The Layoff Song)

I’ve never been a copy editor. But I’ve worked with many over the years in my newspaper career, and they strike me as having the most under-appreciated job in the newsroom. And sometimes, with the emphasis in gotta-post-right-now online journalism, I think we’re all forgetting how important their jobs really are.

With all the layoffs, buyouts, furloughs and other horrible things going on in the industry, I decided to write a song from the viewpoint of a copy editor losing his job. The lyrics are fictional, but the sentiments, I’m afraid, are all too common these days.

I hope you enjoy it. Be sure to let me know what you think. Oh, and if anyone wants to know how I recorded it – what hardware and software I used, etc. – just post and I’ll let you know.

NOTE: THE LINK AT THE TOP GOES TO THE SAMPLES PAGE of my website, where the song lives now. It’s the first song on the left-hand side. Thanks!

 

WHAT THE FARK IS TWACKLE?????

Okay, so I don’t have time now to describe the astonishingly brilliant final projects my students in NMC 301 Writing for the Media Professional presented last night.

I’ll post the links and give descriptions when I don’t have to run. BUT…I had to post about this word one of my students introduced to me last night, at 10:30 pm, as we were all walking to the parking lot. after being dazzled by the group presentations.

“So,  we’re Twackling now, too,” said Ryan McCall casually, (he works for OSU Sports Information)   like a sinkhole hadn’t just opened up beneath us, swallowing the world.

TWACKLE??? TWACKLING??

I have not had time to Google this fresh New Media Hell, but when I do, IT’S ON!!! It’s gonna be TWACKLE MANIA from here on out. I don’t care what it is or if it’s stupid.  BRING IT.