I am still smiling about this tweet
Big shark. Biggest shark you ever saw. I saw it, folks. Huge. Police chief. Great guy, friend of mine. He KILLED it #TrumpExplainsMoviePlots
— Scott Dooley (@scottdools) August 18, 2016
It is the first time I have looked closely at a # meme. (The origin of the meme is here.)
Perhaps it is because I have been reading around perfomativity that I was drawn to the wonderful humour and insight on display within the meme.
The two connect for me through this quote from John Austin:
The words which are used to express ourselves are also means by which we enact ourselves.
All of which encouraged me to think about how teachers and learners might evaluate their shared learning experience through a variation of the meme.
These are my thoughts as an example of an imagined unit at the University of Canberra.
#UCTL16 Old guy kept talking about flipping. Shared stuff in some 'cloud'. Sounded strange, he apologised a lot but persisted. Got me.
— Keith Lyons (@520507) August 18, 2016
I imagine a rich conversation emerging from this parsimonious observation. This approach resonates, I think, with Mary Ryan’s (2012) contemplation of teaching discursive and performative reflection in higher education:
Teachers need to provide opportunities for students to develop meta-discursive skills, whereby they not only engage in the different discourse communities of the different disciplines, but they also know how and why they are engaging and what those engagements mean for them and others in terms of social positioning and power relations.
If students are to enact particular identities within the discipline, they should be provided with opportunities and pedagogic scaffolding to represent their reflective learning in different modes.
As I conclude this post, Scott‘s tweet has received 7,000+ likes and 4,000 retweets. Imagine what this level of engagement might do for personal learning conversations.