With the opening of the new semester, I’ve begun teaching “Introduction to Middle Eastern Studies” at Brigham Young University.  This is a face-to-face course, but we are implementing some asynchronous elements, including a weekly discussion board using BrainHoney and the sharing of tweets about current events in the Middle East.  For the latter activity, students signed up on a GoogleDoc for different countries or issues pertaining to the region.  Now they are posting tweets about that country or issue.  I’m excited about all they are sharing, including links but even more so their commentary on those links.

From my part, it was exciting to “see” the collapse of the Tunisian government while they were tweeting.  I felt somehow more involved in the event because students were capturing tweets on the fall while it happened.

Check out our conversations at #mesa201!