Social networking still isn’t a good way to network socially

Following on from my previous posting about using Twitter in the classroom, here’s another activity to build on it, so students can see how the medium of communication can be as important (and constraining) as the message.

Once students have found each other’s Twitter accounts, the next task begins. Each student is given a slip of paper with their current location and some constraints (e.g. how much money they can spend, lack of travel documents, objects they have to take with them, etc.): the task is simply to agree a location for everyone to meet, at a time that is as soon as possible, given their constraints. They can only communicate via Twitter.

To make things more tricky than they already are, the information requires them to a) work out where they are (you might give out grid references, or a unique road junction), b) work out how to get to a meeting place (they might be overseas, without a passport) and c) work out how to share this with everyone with a view to finding a solution.

This is a very frustrating game, especially if you put a time limit on it.  Leadership becomes very hard to enforce and there are multiple conversations that struggle to overlap.  In this, it’s rather like many real-world scenarios, where the process hinders the pursuit of an outcome.