Today was the day that I went about promoting Steemit to some of my students again. This is another group of students who have not heard of Steemit. After speaking of starting their Steemit journey, one thing that students found daunting was finding out on what to write on Steemit.
As they were cracking their heads on what to write, the answer was simple. Everything that they did at college can be made into a post. The only question was how. Thus, we started a little brainstorming session on how their daily routine can be made into some great posts on Steemit.
Written Assignments or Posts?
written assignments are something that most of the students dread completing on a daily basis. However, there are some written assignment tasks that can be easily converted into a great Steemit post. One of the many such written assignments is the reflective essay. Upon the completion of a particular project, certain courses will require the students to write a short essay, detailing their learning experience from the project.
The students' learning experience is normally written in a reflective manner, detailing not only what they have learnt, but the strengths and weaknesses of a particular project. With some minor tweaking, that particular written assignment can then be converted into a post. The converted assignment for Steemit can have more of a focus on the students' learning outside of the project. This allows the students to possibly relate their assignment to part of their daily lives.
Even if no major tweaks are done, the personal voice and lessons learnt from a particular project could be used to benefit others. I found writing posts based on reflective essays or reports to be great Steemit posts. At times, upon marking some of my students' reflective essays and assignments, I would see some of them questioning the current way of how things are being done. Some would even question the validity of certain testing methods in a world where children have an increasingly short attention span. It is in these assignments that I find some great content to write.
Upon pointing this out, the students seemed happy as at long last, something that seem like a dread to them could be used for another purpose.
Studies Maketh Great Posts
Well, not all studying but being in a higher learning institution, it is supposed to be a place where experts from different fields come to speak on a particular subject. I remember having the dean of the education faculty of Auckland University speak at one of the meetings. He said that with the increasing amount of immigrants in a country, the government has two choices, send them away or educate them. In order to have everyone in a country contributing, education is the only thing that sets the countries that succeed from those that fail.
With such great speakers, I am sure that it won't be hard to be inspired towards writing some great posts. However, even if you do not have great speakers, some education courses would force you to study and discover new knowledge. Such knowledge are necessary for your course's assessment. That being said, you have to study anyway, it would be a waste to spend all that knowledge only on exams. Why not write a post or enlighten some of your readers on what you have learnt. You'll never know who it will benefit.
Besides, writing a post equals to applying and contextualizing your knowledge. Contextualizing knowledge is a great way of retaining and understanding concepts. This is crucial to your learning and exams, so why not just write a post on what you have studied. After all, such manner of posting is a 'form of studying'.
The Travelling, The Fun & The Stress
If studying and written assignments is just not your thing, I am sure many students travel and explore some great places over the weekends. As a father with children, such freedom and activities are ludicrous, but not unreasonable for the college student. A short trip to the island or the local market is enough to snap some great photos that can be made into a great Steemit post.
Furthermore, remember that class trip that happens every semester break? That's a gold mine for some pretty great content. I remember skydiving in one semester break and rolling down a hill in a giant plastic ball in another semester break. You know, back in the good old days in 15 B.K (Before Kids). As for students that I was presenting too, the semester break is coming and there will be trips and visits so it was at this time that I encouraged them to write something to detail their experiences.
However, before the semester break, there will be the much dreaded end of semester exams. The long nights and different studying hacks (including some ridiculous ones) will make for some great posts. Many of the students end up writing of this on Facebook. Thus, I recommended for most of them to post on Steemit instead.
In the end, the students went away hopefully inspired. Well, they looked inspired and ready to start writing on Steemit. That being said, acceptance and adoption of the Steemit platform in my students' lives is still some ways off. Do you think if there are any points in college life that I have missed out? What do you think was the most post-worthy in your college life? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
