Tweeting during a movie

I sometimes show films during my face-to-face history classes and find myself challenged in a couple of ways. Of course I show something that is relevant and that I want students to learn from, but letting go of that time together makes me feel a bit insecure. If they can get the lesson from watching a film, what is my purpose?

Giving the students something specific to do helps with that. I have found various activities related to particular films online, and when in doubt I can ask them to take notes focused on their theme question they are already using for their group project. This has worked well and keeps students engaged with the film, but it still leaves me with nothing to do during the actual viewing. Even the best films can become boring to me after repetitive viewings.

Today I decided to use an experience I have had with +The Center and do a "Tweet cast." I set up a page on the instructor's station in the classroom that streamed the video and included a Twitter widget. I invited students to tweet using our class hashtag and ask questions and post comments during the show. I do not require students to have Twitter accounts so I stay in compliance with FERPA so I also encouraged them to send me texts and I would type them as tweets.

We finish the movie on Wednesday and then students have a few days to earn some extra credit by answering one of the questions I posted inside the course offering on our learning management system. I will gather the transcript of our chat and share that with the students to help them with their work.

I got to sit among the students with my laptop. I enjoyed the experience and felt a lot more engaged with the film than I have in the past. The film was entertaining, informative, and together we were engaged.

In case anyone is interested, we watched Mary Silliman's War and this is after the students had read and I had lectured on the American Revolution and its multiple wars.