On the first night of class, Composition I, the unsuspecting students of @tweric (AKA @compscholar) discovered that they would have to sign-up on Twitter.
 
I made it an assignment worth 100 points.
 
The students had to create a Twitter account and follow @compscholar to get an A. Three of the 24 already were tweeters, and they fumbled for their devices and followed me immediately.
 
A couple others signed up during class, and one even instinctively began to "live tweet" our comp class. Nothing juicy, but these kids these days...give them smart phones and laptops and show them Twitter...they just go at it like it's in our DNA.
 
There were some skeptics. A few grumbles. The smart-assiest signed-up as @forced2join (my personal favorite). Expecting some reluctance, I led off class with the riveting story of James Buck, whose one word tweet "arrested" inspired Shel Israel's new book Twitterville.
 
The James Buck story, arrested in Mahalla, Egypt, appears in the introduction to Twitterville, which just hit the shelves, and is the best book about Twitter and global communities to date.
 
As I ride the 14 bus into downtown Minneapolis, and as I remote blog easily through Posterous, I'm giddy with curiousity about how my students will interact with Twitter. And I am amazed that connecting worldwide is seconds away, which means I have no idea what I might be doing today.
 
Eric Matas
Contributing Editor, Kidundated!