This is exciting news for those who are looking for a way of incorporating literacy into their English or Language or ELL courses. Or History. Or Drama. Or…
Twitter has announced the “Twitter Fiction Festival“. Ideas were submitted and the Festival will run over 5 days at the end of November. You’ll follow the hashtag #twitterfiction to get involved.
Twitter is a frontier for creative experimentation, and we want to invite authors and creative storytellers around the world to push the bounds of what’s possible with Twitter content.
The platform is incredibly powerful. One of my favourite all time activities in this format was the Titanic Twitter Reenactment. I was riveted to the feed – it would be the closest that I would get to being there. Of course, I saw the movie but that is a medium for our times. Imagine the experience with just with the messages (or twitter messages). That’s reality. It also honours the mind.
I was so impressed that I wanted to keep it for future reference. I’ve used it in presentations and will share the link with you.
Of course, there are more ideas along the same line.
One of the ideas that absolutely proved the application to the classroom was Danika Barker‘s experiment taking Shakespeare to Twitter. Talk about a way to engage the texting generation.
This gathered her some media coverage as well. The Ontario College of Teachers featured her efforts in this story. The event was also a big-time story in the London Free Press. Sadly, when I tried to retrieve the link, it failed from the lfpress site. However, Google’s cached version of the story is available here.
Danika has done this a number of times and keeps Storifys of them all. And why not? The results are <= 140 characters but the thoughts, reading, and research from the classroom is very evident. As a student, you wouldn’t want to get caught up in the middle of a Twitter stream not knowing what was going on.
The concept is very powerful and extremely engaging. Make sure that you give the Twitter Fiction Festival a look. You might just be inspired to join in or create a project of your own.
Related articles
- Twitter Fiction Festival (themillions.com)
- Twitter announces Twitter Fiction Festival (wired.co.uk)
- First Twitter Fiction Festival Might Mutate Storytelling Forever (wired.com)
- Sign Up For The Twitter Fiction Festival Now [Updates] (makeuseof.com)
- Announcing the Twitter Fiction Festival (twitter.com)
- Literary Nerds Alert: Twitter Fiction Festival (geeksaresexy.net)
- Announcing Twitter Fiction Festival end of November, by @magicandrew (nextlevelofnews.com)
doug --- off the record 
