Millennial Musings - Southern States Communication Association Conference 2010

Millennial Professor
Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

Backchatter - Were Your Top Words Used in Tweets This Morning?

As most of my readers know, I LOVE twitter! I love integrating the website in my classroom, communicating with former students/colleagues, and gaining new information and I interact with faculty/staff from other universities. However, I always look for new and innovative ways to increase student engagement through this particular communication media.


Backchatter, a game about Twitter trendspotting, was a recent topic on Jane Knight's blog Social Media in Learning. Here is her post -  http://janeknight.typepad.com/socialmedia/2010/02/backchatter-a-game-about-twitter-trendspotting.html. Backchatter enables users to select words they think people include in their daily tweets. If these words emerge in the day's tweets, then the users gain points!


This website is usually integrated with attendees at conferences, BUT it seems the developers are working on expanding their audience.


Have you HEARD OF or TRIED Backchatter?


Millennial Professor
Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

A Millennial Professor's Musings: SSCA 2010/Allergens/Stressors/De-stressing...

I admit, the life of a millennial professor never ends. On Sunday, I arrived back from the Southern States Communication Conference (held in Memphis, TN) at 10:00 a.m. The night before leaving Memphis, I typed and submitted minutes from a conference committee and then I created a sample template for the call for proposals (2011) for a committee and I sent this document via e-mail to the appropriate people.

So, this leads me to Sunday - which I spent taking allergy meds for eight hours and then I spent four hours grading speech outlines via blackboard for a COMS 101 course.

Sunday was finished and Monday morning arrives. Now, take into account - I took so much allergy medicine on Sunday that I was VERY tired and groggy on Monday morning. So, I drove 45 minutes to the university and had a cup to tea to dilute the meds. Thank goodness for tea and the 9 am class because both of these provided a GREAT start to a very long day! After spending the night grading speech outlines I noticed the need for students to find additional research for their topic. This additional research is best accomplished in a computer lab, which is conducive for college student research synergy! It is AMAZING what happens when you place 25+ students in a computer lab (all working on the library's databases). I was able to reserve the library for Monday morning (thank God) and the students were able to obtain their research.

The upper level class is working on their scholarly research papers (that will be submitted for publication) and this class met in the computer lab as well. They are using GOOGLE DOCUMENTS to write their papers and to analyze their data. This has been a great process, but I will write about this in ANOTHER blog entry (and a scholarly paper).

So, after my 1pm class and three cups of coffee AND tea, I was exhausted. When I arrived home around 5pm, I had a bite to eat and took a quick nap. The husband arrived home and I had this GREAT idea to mow the front and back lawn AND to put our raised bed kits together. So, we accomplished all of this, and here is the result....

Millennial Professor
Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

MERLOT ELIXR: Take a Drink of the Case Study Repository Goodness!

The MERLOT ELIXR is a digital case study repository for the education environment. One of the digital case studies in this repository is focused on "Teaching Strategies for Engaging Learners". This case study (by
San Francisco State University) focuses on the following topics:

• engage students in abstract concepts
• engage students with simulation
• engage students through play
• engage students through assignments
• engage students through productions

I examined most of the content in this case study and it is VERY RICH (and it includes videos)! The content is very applicable for the higher education faculty (and some K-12 educators). I wonder how many people access this content and how it impacted their interaction with students in the classroom.


Millennial Professor
Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.