U.S. News Nods at Two UTD Professors for Taking Twitter to School

At a little over 4,000 characters, this story from U.S. News & World Report is running our attention spans ragged -- but we think what they're doing today is throwing a national spotlight on two University of Texas at Dallas professors who've harnessed the awesome power of Twitter in their...

By Patrick Michels

June 2, 2009

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At a little over 4,000 characters, this story from U.S. News & World Report is running our attention spans ragged -- but we think what they're doing today is throwing a national spotlight on two University of Texas at Dallas professors who've harnessed the awesome power of Twitter in their classrooms.

History professor Monica Rankin gets a nod for inviting students to tweet her with questions during lectures, which then show up on an overhead projection screen, which she tells the magazine -- we're paraphrasing now -- helps shy kids get over the fear of asking a stupid question in front of hundreds of people.

Emerging media professor David Parry -- who the Chronicle of Higher Education recently pegged as the No. 5 educator worth following -- is mentioned for using Twitter as a platform to keep class discussions running during real-life hours. The story even paints Parry as a local godfather of microblogging: Not only are his students the ones who helped Rankin harness the power of Twitter in the classroom, but, turns out, last month's live-Tweeted kidney transplant at Children's Medical Center was the brainchild of one of Parry's former students too.

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