Twitter allows one to mark their conversational topic with a hashtag #.
If you join twitter and search #modphys, you find the topics posted regarding using modeling in physics (the ASU stuff Joe mentioned). There is also something called the Global Physics Department. It is hosted by Andy Rundquist of Hamline University in St. Paul MN. They use the hashtag #gdp. They have meetings every wednesday at 8pm central time. It is open to anyone anywhere. He uses Elluminate to run an online meeting with a variety of topics. It can be pretty great professional development. It comes at a time when I am often putting my daughters to bed, so i only make it online for 1 meeting every 3 weeks or so, but it is pretty neat.
There are some other ideas I've found that are nice options, but that might be challenging to implement (along the twitter line). One, stop about 20 minutes into class. Have kid partners pair up and determine what they've learned so far. THe class can determine the top 2 or 3 and you can tweet them (or post them on the board, website etc...). I've tried tweeting them on rare occasions. It can be a hassle, but it can be neat. Additionally, I've had kids try to summarize small sections of class in 130 characters so we can add a hashtag to their comments and tweet them. There are certainly other ways to go, but on the occasions i've tried it, the fact that they are limited in the number of characters they can use requires them to think about they major point and how they can convey those points.
I've gotta run. I hope this is at least a bit coherent. My apologies for the hasty sloppy post. In a rush.
________________________________________
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] on behalf of Bob Irelan [rirelan@cox.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2012 5:42 PM
To: Forum for Physics Educators
Subject: [Phys-l] help figuring out social media
I have just joined this mailing list, so my apologies if this has come up
many times.
I have been teaching high school physics for 15 years or so. I am currently
taking a course on Physics Pedagogy. One of the issues the course is
addressing is the use of social media like Facebook and Twitter as
instructional strategies. I am very much an outsider to the Physics
Education Research community, so my searches for examples or analysis of
using things like Twitter were pretty random I fear.
Does anyone know of places I might find concrete details on how social media
could be used in a physics classroom? It was easy to find people
celebrating twitter for example as a way to help change education, but
harder to find specific examples of how to do it to teach physics. As a
high school teacher, I am probably under many more constraints than a
university teacher.
And, does anyone know any actual studies of the effectiveness in using such
media? I am somewhat skeptical of its potential for me, but I do not want
to simply dismiss it out of ignorance.
Thanks for any help you can give.
And, I offer my apologies for my first post being a plea for your aid. I
hope it doesn't come off as too rude.