I gave my #Freberg14 class an assignment related to Twitter that they had to do this week. It wasn’t necessarily a hard task, but it was to come up with a metaphor for what social media is. I wanted to see what the students came up with that was creative and relevant to class.

Why did I do this for class? This was a way to get to see the personality, creativity, and innovative points of view from each student in class.

This is the thing that is both exciting and wonderful about teaching a social media class like this. You see each student come into the class with different experiences, interests, and goals after they graduate from UofL. I have also a range of both undergraduate and graduate students this semester as well – so it’s been interesting to see how these differences influence their point of view and voice within and outside of the class.

The results were both surprising and exciting – I was very pleased to see how creative the answers were from the class. I felt that this was a very useful exercise to see not only 1) how they perceive social media as a class and 2) how creative they could be with 140 characters.

Of course, as the professor, I had to step up my game to come up with my own definition and metaphor for social media. I said social media is like ☕️.  Some people absolutely ❤️ it, some like variations of it and create their own unique drink that states who they are & coffee takes time to fully appreciate it’s wonderful features and opportunities it brings. Coffee can be consumed at any time, any place, with everyone. Every one has the opportunity to drink coffee.

What would be your metaphor for social media? If you want to see the rest of the examples on Twitter, you can see this Storify with some of the examples or follow the class hashtag #Freberg14 on Twitter or on Tagboard.

Overall, I am looking forward to the upcoming talks, discussions, and ideas that come out of this social media class this semester. Should be fabulous and I welcome fellow students, professors, and professionals to join in on the conversation via social media this semester. Hope you all are having a great day!

Best Wishes,
Karen


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