Tweeting Takes Over #Campchamp
By Marissa Bentivoglio
Whether it's an assignment for a media communications course, to advocate for a club on-campus, to locate a job, or just to complain about the internet at Spinner Place, students, faculty and staff at Champlain, or #campchamp as it is known to the Twitterverse, are flocking to Twitter to connect, share, learn and gripe.
PC Mag, an online magazine focusing on e-business, defines Twitter as, "A very popular instant messaging system that lets a person send brief text messages up to 140 characters in length to a list of followers. Launched in 2006, Twitter was designed as a social network to keep friends and colleagues informed throughout the day. However, it became widely used for commercial and political purposes to keep customers, constituents and fans up-to-date as well as to solicit feedback…Twitter messages ("tweets") can be made public and sent to anyone requesting the feed, or they can be sent only to approved followers" (http://www.pcmag.com/
The typical Champlain student's exposure to Twitter most likely began with Elaine Young's internet marketing course. "I started playing with [Twitter] in March of 2007, and talking about it in class a little during Fall 2007. Then Spring 2008 I started doing more with it. Fall 2008 was the big push," said Young, Assistant Dean of Business as well as a business professor. As part of Champlain's hands-on philosophy, Elaine has her students dive right into the new technology, even if some people are hesitant.
That was then, now many media classes including Rob Williams' Contemporary Media Issues courses (also known as #MCM315 on Twitter) are tweeting about what they're reading, links to their assignments on their blogs, and submitting questions to the professor. Young's senior level marketing students are graded on their "live-tweeting" efforts which require students to summarize the content of a presentation and send tweets throughout the duration. The point of this "live-tweeting" is so that people who are reading and following the feed on twitter can benefit from the presentation without being physically present.
What started with a class assignment has lead to job opportunities for some ambitious individuals. '08 Champlain graduate Grace Boyle, who majored in Public Relations, is the college's case study for using social media to land a job after graduation. Boyle wanted to pursue a position in Boulder, Colorado after Champlain and did so with the power of networking via social media (and a lot of hard work!). She works for Lijit, a start-up in Boulder. "Your Twitter profile is like your resume - it's where your ideas, thoughts, interests, profession and network resides. The power of Twitter shouldn't be overlooked," commented Boyle.
Current students are also making use of Twitter by tweeting what's good in the dining hall, or what clubs are having meetings and where they are located. The Environmental Club, Student Government Association, Ski and Ride Club, LEAD, and other organizations on campus have a twitter account that the various representatives update about activities happening on campus. Students can "follow" librarians at Miller Information Commons (@champlib) whose account is run by Andy Burkhardt, Emerging Technologies Librarian and Sarah Cohen, Information Literacy Librarian. Besides answering students' questions, they will often will tweet pictures of the view of Lake Champlain from MIC's third floor vantage point.
Besides the Champlain community of #campchamp is the greater Burlington community or #btv. This hash tag provides information about what is going on around the city of Burlington. Many local eateries such as Handy's Lunch, August First, New Moon and many others will tweet what their specials of the day are. Most recently Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's was a topic of discussion using the #btv hash tag.
The school is also finding many ways to promote Champlain on Twitter. The Office of Admission has a twitter account @champlainedu while Public Information Officer Stephen Mease uses Twitter to get the word out about Champlain College (@Champlaincolleg) by linking press releases to tweets and "re-tweeting" or quoting what students on twitter are saying about Champlain. What's a better way to get the true feel of a college than directly from the students themselves?
Twitter is a technology people can use to crowd source information. Students, faculty and staff on Twitter were asked to comment on the #campchamp community using the hashtag #CCcurrent. Here's what they had to say:
The responses are generated here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%
No comments:
Post a Comment