scavenger hunts, twitter and teaching

So, last week I sent my undergrads out onto campus for a scavenger hunt during class.  Okay, so it was on that day when it seemed like there were buckets of water falling from the sky and it never seemed to stop, but that wasn't my choice.  They were troopers and barely even complained!  I was pretty impressed.   I would have been much worse as an undergrad if I were sent out into "The Great Flood" to complete an assignment.  It was our first chance to use the twitter account we had set up for this class.  Part of the way they earned credit for the assignment was tweeting pictures of their group with the people they were supposed to be interviewing.  It went pretty well!  Just a few mishaps and technological problems, but they were minimal compared to what I had expected.  I attribute this to the fact that they are all so familiar with twitter.  All but two of my twenty or so students already had active twitter accounts prior to starting this class.  They knew more than I did, that was for sure, but I am working on that.  : )   

Over the past few weeks, I have realized that I wasn't nervous about interacting with the students or even teaching them, but being the center of attention and lecturing.  After last week's teaching perspectives it makes a lot more sense.  I think that I kind of thought of "teaching" as equivalent to "lecture" which is absolutely not my style (my dominant was Nurturing and Lecture was the bottom for me).  So far, we have done activities and group work in the discussions I am teaching and I have loved it! This week we are supposed to present material and I didn't know how I wanted to do that because I dreaded the idea of making a powerpoint and standing up front while students stared at me with glazed eyes and took notes.  Now that I am starting to realize what it is that makes me anxious I also realize that there are much better ways for me to present this material in my own way.  I am actually thinking of modifying the carousel activity from last week, so that the students can put the information together themselves.  Maybe they will even remember it better this way!