EduCon+2.1

Using Social Media to Define the New Humanities Classroom
Facilitator: Antonio Viva Description: Can we harness the power of social media to provide students with a vehicle for exploring and creating original content? WA Mash (Worcester Academy Mashup) is an online magazine where the power of social media is captured to provide creative writing students with a platform for exploring ideas and fostering and contributing to the larger global conversation. By exploring the possibilities offered by the use of social media tools, we explore how one teacher is defining the New Humanities at the secondary school level. Built off the work of Richard E. Miller at Rutgers University, students blog in a timely fashion about a wide variety of cultural, political and economic issues. Most importantly, it is about creating original content and redefining the role of student and teacher. They compliment their work with audio, video, photos and micro-blogging by integrating social media tools like YouTube and Vimeo, Twitter and Flickr. Think Slate or Salon for high school. The conversation will explore the nature and role of the New Humanities in education. How do we define it? What does it look it? What role does it play? And how do we move forward with implementation?

Conversation Website: [|http://wamash.com]

Screencast of Presentation/Conversation: media type="custom" key="3054532"

The WA Mash (Worcester Academy Mashup) website [|wamash.com] Personal website [|antonioviva.com] Twitter Profile [|@antonioviva] delicious Profile http://delicious.com/antonioviva Flickr Profile: http://www.flickr.com/photos/antonioviva/ LinkedIn Profile: [|www.linkedin.com/in/antonioviva]

Course Syllabus:

Resources: The New Humanities Reader website [|www.newhum.com/] [|**Howard Rheingold’**s] "[|Social Media Classroom]" [|Participatory Learning and the New Humanities: An Interview with Cathy Davidson] [|The Future is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors] [|The Spirit of the New Humanities] [|WOW: An Example of New Media's Value to the Humanities] [|This Is How We Dream, Part 1]

Presentation SlideShare: media type="custom" key="3054528"