On 12th September, ten enthusiastic and curious students from Amity, Noida and 8 from LSR had gathered in our conference room at 11 am. Some of them had attended our TweeSurfing workshop before and some were new. The flow of the workshop was going to be similar to the ones conducted before but with a few new activities and some videos of new people that we had interviewed recently. To set a fun tone to the day, we began with a viewing of AIB’s new video called ‘Creep Qawali’ on trolls in the online space. This was followed by a round of introductions including Twitter handles to get things started and a small intro on what the flow of the workshop was going to be like. We also saw played a few videos of the Twitter celebrities that we had interviewed in Mumbai to help the students connect to the purpose of the workshop.
We often begin our workshops with an activity called ‘Social Fencing’ in which the participants are required to sketch or draw on a framed sheet of paper. The activity is to see if anybody draws ‘outside the box’ and mostly all students draw within with the exception of a very few ones who do saw outside the lines. During this workshop though, one of the participants from Amity guessed the point of the activity and so ensued a short discussion on the importance of not being tied down by conventional schools of thought. We then did a round of Twitter trivia which always gets the students going. The highlight of the workshop was the activity we did with the students on building campaigns around specific community standards. This activity really gets the creativity in the students going and its interesting to see the different perspectives that come through in the presentations.
The campaign activity rules were simple- they had to come up with a campaign idea in 140 characters as per Twitters basic feature and then elaborate on it including coming up with a hashtag related to the campaign. They had a total of 40 minutes for it and had to present the campaign with their group in the end. The students built their campaigns on Twitters standards on hateful conduct, trolling, self harm, personal space. Each campaign had some truly unique ideas and the students were really creative with the hashtags. We always encourage each student to participate in the presentations with their groups and all the groups expressed their ideas wonderfully.
We were even treated with a small talk by our director Dr Ranjana Kumari and a small question answer round with the her and the students. She always brings a fresh vibe of incredibly positive energy and it was a real treat for the students. The workshop ended soon after the presentations that were left and we called it a day with some delicious lunch for the students and a chit-chat about how they felt the day had gone and what they liked or disliked about the workshop.
Have a look at our Twitter moment on the workshop for more details!
Tweesurfing with students of Lady Shri Ram College & Amity University
