Twitter Makes a Cameo Appearance as a Teaching Tool

09 Feb Twitter Makes a Cameo Appearance as a Teaching Tool

Thursday nights at my house are a battle zone for television time. It happens that my and my wife’s favorite’s shows are almost all in the same two hour window, between 7pm and 9pm. My shows are Community, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock and her shows are Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. Thanks to the greatness of DVR, we set our shows to record and watch them as we can, given that we are usually preparing dinner, feeding our 5-month-old, and whatever else we need for the next day.

Like any marriage, we have to do our best to compromise.  She tolerates my shows and I tolerate hers. However, this past week, one of my wife’s shows got me more giddy than any of my shows because it touched on a subject I find fascinating, the use of social media (in this case Twitter) for sharing knowledge and teaching. Grey’s Anatomy, a medical drama set primarily in a Seattle Washington hospital, isn’t usually known for extolling the virtues of teaching. Although the hospital is supposed to be a teaching institution, the show typically focuses on the cast member relationships and the medical procedures (usually rare and interesting).

This week’s episode had a plotline that “took on” the subject of using Twitter inside the operating room to communicate and share the experience of surgery.  What I liked the most about the episode was that it broached several relevant issues associated with social media in education such as the ambitious surgeon who isn’t afraid to use new technology to teach, the reluctance of the hospital administrator to allow the use of the tool during surgery because of his misconception about Twitter, and his eventual acceptance of the tool once he realized that it could be used to share and teach relevant knowledge.  Below is a small clip from the episode where the administrator is upset about the use of Twitter in the operating room:

At the end of the clip, the student attendant starts Tweeting about the complications. Through Twitter communication with other area hospital doctors, they are able to collectively help find a solution for the patient’s complication. The episode did a great job in encapsulating many of the issues associated with social media in education. Given that many of these shows practice the “Art imitates life” philosophy to writing, I did a little research and found that the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit actually tweeted real-time during a brain surgery back in 2009.

Please feel free to share examples of the use of social media for collaboration and teaching in other specialized disciplines.