All Posts Tagged With: "Twitter"
There’s a new social media obsession on campus
And it’s a haven for racist, sexist trolls
Facebook. Twitter. MSN. Google Plus. There’s no shortage of places for students to chat, opine, or procrastinate during finals. Yet there’s a new digital obsession spreading across Canadian campuses. It’s called OMG and it’s simple. Students submit short “Oh My Gods” about anything. Then, they’re posted to the site.
As a Waterloo student who found myself distracted by OMGUW far too often in December, I got thinking about what makes it so hard to look away. I wanted to know what makes it so enticing that it has spread from Waterloo to Guelph, Saskatchewan and Toronto, with tens of thousands of views.
Continue reading There’s a new social media obsession on campus
Professor wants Pride Parade banned
Shinder Purewal tweeted that the parade is “vulgar”
A Kwantlen University professor tweeted Thursday that Vancouver’s Pride Parade “should be banned.”
Shinder Purewal, who was also a third-place Liberal Party candidate in Surrey during the recent federal election and was a citizenship judge, sent out this offensive tweet on Thursday morning:
“Vancouver’s so-called ‘Pride Parade’ should be banned. It is vulgar…to say the least!”
Purewal later explained to the CBC that he would not want his children to see half-naked people walking down the street.
“A lot of people in our society wouldn’t want to see that display downtown.” And he added, “it’s not homophobic… It’s simply if they want to have a pride parade it should be a cultured phenomenon. It should not be sexuality on display.”
Vancouver Pride organizer Kevin Coolen said Purewal has the right to his point of view, but he added that he thinks it couldlead to more homophobia.
Kwantlen University sent out a tweet stating that Purewal’s point of view does not represent the school’s.
A flood of other Tweeters responded to his statement, mainly with criticism.
$38,000 scholarship for one Tweet
Essays are unoriginal, says student aid official
The University of Iowa is offering a $38,000 scholarship to its business school for the best tweet by a prospective student who explains why he or she will make a good MBA hire, reports USA Today. That’s right, it’s a 140-character application that pays $271 per letter.
Jodi Schafer, the University of Iowa’s director of MBA admissions and financial aid, told the newspaper that application essays were “becoming unoriginal,” She explained that, “we’re hoping that incorporating social media in the process will help bring back some of that creativity.” Students can include a link to anything they like in their tweet, including blogs, videos or Facebook accounts.
The University of Iowa isn’t the first school to eschew the 800-word entry essay in favour of the Tweet. Kentucky Fried Chicken received 2,800 applications for it’s $20,000 Twitter scholarship last year. To enter, students explained why they deserved the cash. The $20,000 winning entry was by a student who didn’t even use all 140 characters. She wrote that the scholarship “is the secret ingredient missing from my recipe for success.”
Blanket-ban on social media in high schools
Rhode Island legislators say Facebook causes bullying
The U.S. state Rhode Island has passed an “anti-bullying” law that creates a state-wide ban on the use of social networking sites anywhere on school property. As The Huffington Post points out, that means students won’t be able to access the legislature’s own Facebook page, which could make it difficult for the government to extend its fan-base beyond the eight people who have “liked” it so far.
McGill admin shouldn’t stay mum on alleged death threats
University needs to publicly address student’s threatening tweets
Many people are talking about the tweets posted by McGill University student Haaris Khan earlier this month, with the exception, ironically, of those whose statement is most imperative.
McGill University has not commented on the tweets Khan posted while watching a screening of Indoctrinate U on campus. “I want to shoot everyone in this room,” he tweeted during the event, which was hosted by Conservative McGill and Libertarian McGill. “I should have brought an M16,” he later added.
McGill’s Deputy Provost released a statement only after the McGill Tribune and other news outlets picked up the story. The statement, however, merely justified McGill’s handling of the incident and fell short of actually condemning the spread of potentially violent messages on campus. Bizarrely, the Deputy Provost ended the statement with a paragraph outlining the “downside of social media.”
Khan has since apologized for his tweets in a letter published in the Tribune. “My comments were totally inappropriate and I would never harm my fellow students,” he wrote, adding that his tweets “were meant in jest.” Maybe I just have a lousy sense of humour, but I think there’s a reason clown costumes don’t come with mock M16’s.
What isn’t funny, though, is the formal silence from the McGill administration. Citing Quebec’s privacy laws, McGill refuses to discuss what action, if any, will be taken against Khan. But McGill needs to reassure its students, faculty, and staff that threats of violence—even if “meant in jest”—will not be tolerated on campus. While a commitment to privacy is fine, McGill must also fulfill its obligation to provide a safe space on campus. (And for all the vacuous talk we so often hear about “safe spaces,” here is a situation where it actually seems warranted.) That means assuring everyone on campus (however generally) that threats of violence are completely unacceptable. McGill shouldn’t let its silence do the talking.
McGill student apologizes for Twitter threats
Police won’t be laying charges against Haaris Khan
Haaris Khan, the McGill University student who made threatening comments via his Twitter account, has issued an apology. “My comments were totally inappropriate and I would never harm my fellow students,” Khan wrote in a statement published in the McGill Tribune.
Earlier this month, Khan had attended a screening of documentary Indoctrinate U that was hosted by student groups Conservative McGill and Libertarian McGill. The film alleges that American universities are biased against conservative ideas. During the screening, attended by around 20 people, Khan posted several messages to his Twitter that others viewed as threatening. One message read, “I want to shoot everyone in this room,” while another stated, “I should have brought an M16.”
Montreal police investigated the incident, but no charges will be filed because no proof could be found of “criminal intent” behind the comments, the Montreal Gazette reported. The university is not making public whether Khan will face punishment for his actions.
McGill student investigated over Twitter threats
Conservative film screening prompts comments about shooting ‘everyone in this room’
Montreal police are investigating a McGill University student who allegedly posted threatening comments to Twitter, the McGill Tribune reported. Haaris Khan made the comments while attending a film screening of Indoctrinate U, hosted by Conservative McGill and Libertarian McGill last Wednesday.
One of Khan’s messages, according to screen shots obtained by campus Conservatives, read, “I want to shoot everyone in this room,” while another read, “I should have brought an M16.” Indoctrinate U is a documentary that alleges American universities are biased against conservative ideas, and around 20 people attended the McGill screening. Khan also wrote that “I’ve infiltrated a Zionist meeting” and “I feel like I’m at a Satanist ritual.”
After learning of the Twitter messages last Thursday, Conservative McGill members contacted university security, who informed the police. Police opened an investigation, but no arrests have yet been made. It was confirmed that Khan does not own a gun.
Khan, who has since deactivated his Twitter account, says the comments were not intended as genuine threats.” Whatever comes into my mind, I say it on Twitter,” he told the Tribune.
Kevin Pidgeon, a Conservative McGill member, said he did feel threatened by the online remarks. “I’m 100 per cent for free speech . . . But when it encroaches on my and about 15 other people’s right to life . . . I think right to life wins out over right to free speech,” he said.
NYU fellow trashes raped journalist
Offensive comments are a step back for progressive attitudes toward rape victims
While most of us were horrified to read the news that CBS correspondent Lara Logan had been brutally beaten and raped in Egypt, Nir Rosen, a fellow at NYU Center for Law and Security, just couldn’t resist a few political jabs.
He began his Twitter rant saying:
“Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal.” (Anderson Cooper had also been attacked while covering the protests in Egypt.)
He then continued:
“Yes yes its wrong what happened to her. Of course. I don’t support that. But, it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.” (Rape is hilarious, says NYU scholar.)
And it gets worse:
“Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger.” (Don’t feel too bad for her, she propagates war!)
Then:
“Look, she was probably groped like thousands of other women, which is still wrong, but if it was worse than [sic] I’m sorry.” (Maybe if I pluralize her plight than you’ll see my point? Uhh… *then.)
Followed, of course, by a feeble attempt a damage control:
“ah fuck it, I apologize for being insensitive, it’s always wrong, that’s obvious, but I’m rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get.”
Then a better one:
“As someone who’s devoted his career to defending victims and supporting justice, I’m very ashamed for my insensitive and offensive comments.”
It’s hard not to be disgusted by Rosen’s remarks. Despite much of the progress that’s taken place in Western society in recent decades with regards to the perception of women and gender equality, sexual assault is one of those issues that seems to lag behind. It wasn’t until 1983 with Bill C-127, for example, that a man could be charged for sexually assaulting his wife. And later, in 1992, when victim blaming finally took a hit with a rape shield law laying out strict guidelines governing how accusers’ previous sexual conduct could be brought into assault trials. Then there are treasures, such as Whoopi Goldberg, who defended Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl as not “rape-rape,” and worrying stories of honour killings taking place in Canadian cities where girls deemed “sexually immodest” are murdered for dishonouring families.
Blaming the victim is not new, although usually the line is: “Well, if she went out looking like that…” rather than “Well, she is a war monger, after all.” But politicizing tragedy is always tasteless, no matter how you spin it. Whether it’s rejoicing in the grave illness of a political opponent or using a horrific incident to malign those on the other side of the table, there is usually little to be reaped for such rhetoric except for some pitiful self-satisfaction.
As a man and an academic who purports to be a progressive human rights advocate, Rosen has let his larger political agenda blind him from acknowledging individual injustice. Remarks such as his, which are so poorly and misguidedly contextualized, hinder the progression of attitudes towards rape victims and women overall. It seems he can only support justice as long as its on his terms. Your move, NYU.
Update: Nir Rosen submitted his resignation to NYU earlier today. The university has accepted.
Twitter not the cause of higher GPAs
It’s the way students use the tool, not the tool itself, that delivers results
It turns out, for some students, the addition of technology to the classroom has helped with their grades. Or at least that’s what a recent study from an unnamed Midwest American university would have you believe.
Paige Chapman summarizes the study’s findings on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website:
“At the end of the semester, the tweeters had grade-point averages half a point higher, on average, than did their non-tweeting counterparts. And students who tweeted were more engaged. Twitter users scored higher than those who didn’t use the tool on a 19-question student-engagement survey over the course of the semester — using parameters like how frequently students contributed to classroom discussion, and how often they interacted with their instructor about course material.”
But the study’s conclusion misses the mark entirely.
The entire title of the study, “The Effect of Twitter on College Student Engagement and Grades,” is counter-intuitive. Regardless of the effect a tool may have on learning, it is the way that students choose to use the tool that is most important. Chalkboards, after all, are useful learning tools, but nobody would suggest that the use of chalkboards is somehow causal in the event of chalk-using students getting better grades than their chalk-free peers.
The willingness of some students to use a tool like Twitter, or a chalkboard for that matter, is demonstrative of a student’s wider ability to interact with unfamiliar tools, to expand their horizons, to ask more difficult questions and to engage with classroom material in new ways. This quality can also manifest itself in the classroom through increased participation and deeper interaction with the subject matter.
But one thing should be made clear: These are qualities possessed by students, not by the tools they choose to use.
Whether a student uses a tool like Twitter or not can be indicative of a number of things. But it is not, by itself, indicative of a student’s intelligence, nor is it by itself capable of boosting any single student’s GPA. The possession of a hammer does not make a person a better carpenter, but simply offers them more opportunities.
I would hate to see the effects of a study like this on an impressionable young student, struggling with their course load, thinking that the answer to all of their academic problems lies in a Twitter account. Sure, in some cases, Twitter can bring a new, dynamic and sometimes valuable contribution to class life, but it’s completely naïve to think that the simple addition of this social networking tool to a classroom will turn Cs to As.
Put your laptop away
And your phone. And your iPod. We have work to do.
Another day, another attack on us mean old industrial-age professors.
This time, it’s historian Fred Donnelly telling us all to chill out over lap tops in class. Students are not ignoring the work at hand, Donnelly suggests. Instead, they are returning to a pre-industrial mode of work:
Consider how people worked in the pre-industrial era. Labourers in agriculture and construction sang on the job. Weavers composed poetry to the rhythm of the loom and many skilled artisans employed a boy to read to them while they worked. Everyone talked on the job and took unscheduled breaks quite frequently. In short, they laboured away in a multitasking environment.
Right. And if slaves in the old South had had the internet, their masters would have been perfectly happy to let them caption Lolcats instead of picking cotton.
But seriously, the argument fails not just because of what seems to be an overly romanticized view of pre-industrial labour (oh to be a medieval serf: that was the life!), but because it creates a false analogy. There are some tasks you can do while you listen to music or chat with your friends. Who has not whiled a way a long car ride singing along to the radio? But there are other tasks that require one’s full concentration if they are to be done well. Listening to a lecture, and thinking about the content, and considering its connection to other things in the course, and taking notes — not to mention asking and answering questions — these are things that simply cannot be done effectively while watching videos on YouTube or killing zombies or updating your Twitter feed.
The laptop, Donnelly suggests, is a challenge to the authority of the professor, who is really no more than a Dickensian shop foreman:
Now, students have their own portable windows to stare into, their own songs to listen to, their games to play and messages to send to friends inside and outside the classroom. All the while they are seated at their work benches – oops, sorry, their places in the classroom – and presumably also taking notes from an instructor.
But that’s just it. They’re not also taking notes. They’re chatting with their friends in other classes:
ths class = CWOT prof thinks we r t8king notes FAIL LOL
That’s what kills me about the new apologetics of this supposed digital generation. While professors pat themselves on the back for being in touch and progressive, for creating a dynamic new learning environment, they are really creating an environment of increased contempt for learning and study.
All these students with laptops? They’re not multi-tasking. They’re just ignoring you.
The appeal of Twitter
How to let off steam during exams
During final exams I can suddenly see the appeal of Twitter.
Scott is feeling bogged down right now. Send food.
Scott will never take another chemistry class again. Ever. Until he has to.
Scott ate too many macadamias and will hurl if anyone so much as whispers “want some nuts?”
Scott thinks that people who speak of themselves in the third person to be a special kind of ass.
-photo courtesy of jmilles
Students, social media, and net rage
If social media empowers people, can that power be abused?
I’ve been in a minor twitter war lately on the topic of the #TTC. For those either not in Toronto, or else not paying attention, there has been a recent explosion of stories about transit employees slacking off on the job. The first was about a sleeping fare collector caught on camera. Fair enough – sleeping on any job has got to be a no-no. Then it was a bus driver caught on video while taking an unscheduled washroom break and getting a coffee. Now it’s become the thing to do to snap photos or film videos of TTC employees doing just about anything. And it’s getting a lot of attention.
On the one hand this is a good news story. It’s about citizens taking power over their public services, and it represents yet another victory of social media. The very same tools that allow dissidents in Iran to get their message out allow disgruntled TTC riders to get their point across too. Never let it be said I’m against that. But at some point there also has to be a limit. The problem has been expressed in any number of creative ways. Some say “little brother is watching you!” Some refer to citizen-paparazzi. I say that even a little bit of power can be abused, and if it’s abused by enough people then we have a big problem. But however we express the issue, I think we can all agree there must be a limit.
There are 10,000 or so TTC employees (warning – info from Wikipedia – in any event there are a lot) and if you aim enough cameras at all of them you’ll always catch someone. That’s life. If we start resenting people their coffees and their pee breaks, or make a public issue of it every time someone sneaks out back for a smoke, we’ll only succeed in making their lives intolerable. And in a world where turnabout is fair play, there’s decent odds someone will be making our own lives unbearable in return. This kind of war can’t end well for anyone. We’ve seen how social media can improve our lives. We may be on the verge of seeing how it can screw them up too.
Considering how wired and net-savvy most students are, I think this an issue that’s especially relevant to our generation. I’m also reminded of a minor but memorable event that occurred during my tenure on the local students’ union. We had a message forum for students. It was well-used and appreciated in its time. Then students started ragging on the local Tim Horton’s on our campus – complaining about the wait times, the service, and then about specific staff members. And I heard from one of those staff members as a result. She was genuinely hurt. Just a regular, minimum wage employee trying to do her job. The attention made her very uncomfortable. Her daughter attended the same campus. And I couldn’t help feeling as though we’d crossed a line. Today that line is even easier to cross, and in dramatic fashion.
There are justifiable complaints about the TTC, just as there are justifiable complaints about many other things. The ability to articulate and coordinate those complaints, as citizen-journalists and as participants in social media, is very powerful and important. But that power has got to be tempered with at least some sense of responsibility. If it is not, we risk not only harming people out of proportion to their individual blameworthiness, we also risk delegitimizing the very tools that have proved so effective.
It really does sadden me how often students are and feel disempowered. Just as TTC riders feel disempowered. And change is certainly overdue in both contexts. But I also think that people who are used to feeling disempowered, once they latch onto a bit of power, are sometimes apt to use it in negative ways. It’s an idea I’d urge everyone to think more about – especially before you aim your camera, or your iphone, or your blog at someone. It’s always in order to question and even attack institutions. But before you attack individuals be sure it’s warranted. Because next time it’s just as likely to be you.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
Now on Twitter
Finally took the “red pill”
After a long period of determined resistance, I finally bought into Twitter. Part of my resistance, for the longest time, was the sense that Twitter would collapse under wide adoption – rather like how the Facebook feed to “watch” what your friends are @doing has effectively collapsed under the weight of too many users and too many friends. It’s been hammered into near uselessness. But the new lists function promises a solution to that for Twitter.
Not to substitute my own new experiences for the informed opinion in that link I just offered, but the advantage of lists is threefold. First, you can maintain public lists to share your interests. That’s fine, but hardly revolutionary. Second, you can follow other lists, and get a sense of what’s going out outside of who you’re following. Again, nice, but not a new idea. But third, you can maintain private lists. This is the game changer for me. This allows you to sort all of the people you are following into topical categories – as broad or as specific as you like. So in my case, for example, I can maintain a list of the folks who write on post-secondary issues and see just what they’ve done lately when I want to get into that topic. It isn’t lost in a sea of where my friends went drinking last night, or details about my cousin’s wedding. And when I do want to see what my family and friends are up to, I can have lists for that too, and sort out everything else.
If anyone is interested, you can follow me here. One complaint about Twitter is that it doesn’t seem to triangulate people very well in the search function, making it hard to find people sometimes. While Facebook will assume the person you want is probably the one you have the most friends in common with, Twitter seems to apply no such logic. So it’s proving hard to find some people. Often, in the new digital age, I do appreciate the advantages of an uncommon name.
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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.
To Tweet, or not to Tweet
Two UChicago students are going to rewrite 75 classic novels and plays as “Twitterature”
Turning classic novels into “Twitterature”
College roommates rewrite Dante, Shakespeare and others ― 140 characters at a time
Did you ever feel that Hamlet was too wordy? Was Moby Dick too long?
The Chicago Tribune is reporting that someone has “found a solution” to your problems. That someone is a pair of first-year University of Chicago students who have signed a book deal with Penguin Books to rewrite 75 classic novels and plays as “Twitterature.”
Nineteen-year-old roommates Alex Aciman and Emmett Rensin will rewrite classics by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Dante and other literary greats, and plan to do so in 20 or fewer 140-character tweets.
“Imagine if Achilles had a Twitter account and an iPhone, and he was telling his story in real time,” says Aciman, a comparative literature major from New York. “That’s what this book is going to be like.”
The students claim to have already read all the books they plan on tweeting. That is, except for the popular teen vampire novel Twilight. “A modern classic,” deadpans Rensin, a philosophy major from California.
University of Chicago literature professor W.J.T. Mitchell is backing the project. “This is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect University of Chicago students to come up with.”
What do you think? Are you horrified? Think it’s a great idea? Let us know.
Twitter in the Classroom
Dr. Rankin, history professor at UT Dallas, experiments with Twitter in the classroom.
Dr. Rankin, history professor at UT Dallas, experiments with Twitter in the classroom.
National student politics in the Web 2.0 era
CASA delegates debate on Twitter, national audience joins in
When I started blogging in 2005, there were only a handful of people involved in campus politics who communicated publicly on the Internet.
Today, this is not the case. This weekend marks a real milestone in student politics; the first real-time open group conversation debate related to a national student lobbying organization meeting.
(Note: People have “tweeted” at previous meetings, this is the first time a real-time large scale discussion has occurred live on Twitter.)
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations is meeting in Calgary this week. Many of the student politicians are using Twitter to communicate their thoughts. One of the them, Blake Fredrick of the University of British Columbia Alma Mater Society is not a fan of CASA and is making it known on his Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/Blake_Frederick
Frederick has started a discussion with his comments, a discussion which is best followed using the twitter search engine here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Blake_Frederick
You can follow all tweets related to the CASA meeting here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=#casacon
