On Birds, Twitter and Teaching

Now that I’m spending more time in classrooms than the newsroom, I often face students displaying a peculiar kind of bifocal gaze divided between the front of the room and the laptop screen. So I know about the frustrations of teachers in trying to engage students in the real world even as they’re buffeted with digital information.

That’s why I love the ongoing experiment in learning being conducted by Margaret Rubega, who teaches ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut and has employed Twitter as a learning and communication tool in her ornithology syllabus. When I describe innovation as a prime driver of progress in years to come, I’m not just talking about photovoltaics and genetics, but also innovation in communication and education. This is why I’m convinced that 140 characters can matter.

In each new semester, Rubega requires students — most of whom, she finds, initially are not using Twitter — to open an account and post any time they witness some interesting bit of bird behavior. (I’ve since required my communication students to do the same, and they’ve almost universally embraced this; you can track one class’s forthcoming documentary on shrimp farming, for instance, via @got_shrimp.)

To make sure Rubega’s ornithology students can track one other’s output (and to make sure she can assess their posts as part of their grade), she has adopted the hashtag #birdclass. You can track their string here. You can also post your own thoughts on birds using that tag if you think the students might benefit.

I posted one not long ago, expressing hope that the male American woodcock that chose to woo a mate and nest in our scrubby fields in recent years would return. I include a sound clip I’d recorded in 2009 of the bird’s call.

@Revkin: Audio: In context of Twitter #birdclass really hoping this woodcock returns to our yard this spring. More… //tumblr.com/x702akz9q0

The mating ritual of the woodcock is amazing, involving spiraling dusk flights filled with burbling vocalizations, then a repeated swooping landing and intermittent loud buzz. (I learned from my naturalist wife that you can slowly creep incredibly close to the landing spot, moving a few feet during each circling flight.)

The spring semester just wrapped, but the the class’s Twitter thread continues. Rubega sent me this farewell Tweet from a student:

@acurt @ProfRubega I got within 3 ft of a black-capped chickadee in my backyard today; got so excited to tweet it, then got sad. Bye bye #birdclass

Do you know anyone else using Twitter as a learning tool?

Here are a couple of explanatory sheets offered by Rubega that describe how to replicate what she’s done and the strengths and limits of Twitter as a classroom tool: