During Thanksgiving last week I gave this assignment to some of my colleagues who also teach UNIV 100 to see what they thought about using something like this in their courses. I also gave them the opportunity to provide me with feedback about the lesson and I had some great comments and suggestions.

This week was a wrap up of sorts in my UNIV 100 sections and we discussed what the students liked and didn't like about the course. What I should continue to include and what I should pitch. A large number of students said I should definitely keep the scavenger hunt, but tweak it a bit.

Honestly I might take Justin's suggestion and use this as one of my assigned "Class Explorations". These are assignments throughout the semester that help students better acquainted with campus and one another. Instead of having this during an actual class period, I may have this be an outside activity that they must complete as groups.

First round of testing this week with my two sections of U100 students, and there were definitely things that went well, and some that didn't go as well as I had planned. Although, the students overall seemed to enjoy the process and appreciated me attempting to use new technologies in (or outside as it may be) the classroom, which is always a good thing!

What went well: The students were able to check in to locations easy enough through Facebook, so I am unsure if there is a need to use some other form of social media. I may just keep things with Facebook for now. Although I did just get an update e-mail from Pinterest that you can now "pin" locations, so I may have to look into this more! Most all groups found every location and took the pictures as I directed and got them to me easily enough through Snapchat. Most groups were also able to locate their peer mentor and find my office easy enough.

What didn't go so well: I hadn't anticipated them all having full backpacks for their before and after classes. Since they finished in my office and not the classroom, they had nowhere to store their bags. As such, for next semester, I may hold class in the afternoon/evening when everyone is free and do this activity then or I may just have everyone start/finish in my office. Also, not everyone in class had signed up for the Facebook group so that presented a small challenge for a couple of the groups. I need to make sure everyone signs up for the group at the beginning of the semester so I don't run into this issue again. Snapchat worked fine, most of my students had it already on their phones, but I had two small issues with this: 1) You can't "save" the picture for future use (after 3-10 seconds), 2) I had some reservations about giving students my Snapchat ID because it's not as widely used as Facebook and such. I probably would just use e-mail or maybe Instagram in the future with this one. Perhaps there is something to this Pinterest thing I mentioned earlier, too.

Overall it's been a good experience thus far, and I can't wait to tweak it and try it again. There is always room for improvement, right?

I have created two U100 Facebook groups (which are set to private, and only students from each section of U100 can join), and each class will be broken into teams of 3 with a total of 6 teams per class. Each team must come up with a fun team name. In the Facebook groups, I have posted 9 different clues for finding 10 various locations on campus. Some of these include Career Services, the Counseling Center, the Student Rec Center, etc. One of the locations also has their peer mentor waiting for them, and I have had each peer mentor post a clue as to her location as well. The students can go in any order, but they must find as many locations as possible in 45 minutes. As they arrive at each location, they must 1) check in on Facebook, and 2) snapchat a picture to me (with everyone in their group included) showing the location. Then they can move on to the next. Their final destination is my office (so that they know where to come during office hours if they have any questions), where we go through the check-ins and snapchats and find out which team is victorious! Prizes will definitely be included.

Some modifications I am already anticipating would be using Scvngr or Foursquare to check-in instead of Facebook or even something else. Also perhaps Instragram or Twitter vs. Snapchat just because it might be fun to make a picture collage for the students once they are done, and Snapchat doesn't keep the pictures. I am excited to get some feedback from my "test runs".

I have been trying to come up with something that I could utilize in my U100 class as we have a "free" week coming up where I can incorporate whatever sort of lesson I'd like. For now, my plan is to create an interactive scavenger hunt across campus for students to become more familiar with the buildings on campus and what they house. For example, the library houses the writing center. The students would work in groups to solve the clues and then visit each location where they would "check in", take a group picture, and then either post on facebook or twitter. I am still trying to figure out which Web 2.0 tools I'd like to use and I may incorporate more than one. For now, I am considering facebook, twitter, foursquare, instragram, and possibly snapchat. As I start to work out the details of how this would best flow, I will post more. I look forward to seeing what others have in mind for their projects and also receiving feedback so that I can make my lesson even better!