Brainstorming Through Social Media

Collaboration through peer review is becoming increasingly popular, and for good reason. It is important for students to realize that writing can--and, in many ways, should--be collaborative. What I would like to propose here, though, is that we find ways to collaborate in other arenas, ones which take place earlier in the drafting process. Peer review typically takes place after a draft is "completed," but what if we tried collaboration the pre-writing, or brainstorming phase? This is an avenue worth exploring and social media sites are perfectly suited for doing that.

I think, if executed effectively, collaborative brainstorming sessions could be both fun and rewarding for students. As writing based sites, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs could provide great venues for this. Students are constantly tuned in to these sites and are looking for topics and ideas to interact over. For this reason, brainstorming would be perfectly suited for social networks; ultimately, it is seemless to the M.O. of the sites.

With the ability to post short messages on Twitter and Facebook, it would be easy for students to post their research question, central idea, or argument and get feedback on it. Blogs (and the Note feature on Facebook) would allow students to post more brainstorming content for the purposes of feedback. Perhaps they can post images or videos they are researching or using as source material to garner additional responses. Brainstorming in this fashion could allow students to not only further refine their own thoughts on a topic, but also get an opposing viewpoint which they may not have considered.

Taking privacy issues and the connection of students into consideration, Facebook allows for the creation of private Groups and Fan Pages where students can interact. These spaces would also allow for the teacher to observe and grade the brainstorming sessions as needed. There are a myriad of possibilities with this idea.

Brainstorming via personal network pages could be a great way for students to interact in "on their terms" while accomplishing school work.