At the beginning of the fall, 2012 school year, the Marian E. Wright Writing Center at the University of Michigan-Flint delved into the social media world of Twitter. Using the handle @UMFlintWC our writing center hoped to get our campus connected with writing tips and hints, writers and ideally, other writing centers. The first few weeks gathered a small following, but we needed to connect more. I began brainstorming ideas as to how to bridge this gap. After an inspiring presentation by Byran Alexander at our campus, I thought about the idea of flash fiction writing in digital spaces with a group of individuals who continue to add to a story for an infinite amount of time. Where could this story come to life? Why not on Twitter? So I came up with the idea to create a digital story using the writing center’s Twitter that involved all of campus. The goal was to create a connectedness between the writing center and campus, that all of us are writers even if it is only 140 characters, and that we all have something important to say.

Our Twitter story was a huge success (read more here). Over the span of five days, we had a total of 97 tweets that contributed to our scary story (in lieu of Halloween). It was awesome to see students, staff and faculty come together to write a story without ever sitting down in the same room, plotting out ideas. The story came together so smooth, I was inspired to expand the project.

At the 2012 National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW), I presented my Twitter story project, plan of attack, goals, and results. After receiving positive feedback from attendees, I decided to move forward and do this on a much grander scale with involvement from writing centers from around the world.

Shortly after the NCPTW, it was announced to our writing center staff that we were being moved from our current space, a space where we had been for over twenty years. At first we were sad. Our space was what we jokingly referred to as ‘the island of misfit toys’ and ‘Candyland’. It was a space where we came to do what we did best, to hang out and to make lasting memories. We didn’t want to move someplace new because this was our ‘home’. This was our space that we loved.  But like with any ending, why focus on the negative? So we started recalling fun memories and moments from our time spent in our space. Pulling out pictures from years ago and taking new news to remember our last semester here. And this is where the theme came to do the Twitter project on the grander scale.

For the International Writing Centers Week, I have decided to start a Twitter collage with writing centers from around the world, inspired from our reflection of love for our space. This project will involve writing centers from around the world to reflect with us. To be able to participate, writing centers will need to have a Twitter account and tweet pictures of their space responding to the prompt, ‘What do you love about your writing center space?’ This is a great way to share great moments with each other, make connections with places we’ve never been to, and read stories that we can all relate with. So I invite all writing centers to get involved with this collaborative project and weave a tapestry of stories together using digital media.

Below lists all information on how to get involved.

When:

During the week of February 10^th-16^th, the International Writing Centers Week.

Where:

On Twitter. If your writing center doesn’t have a Twitter account, never fear! Setting one up is easy and is a great way to network with your campus and other writing centers. Go here to create your account today.

Expectation:

Writing centers will share photos of their spaces and tell the world what it is they love about their writing center in 1 or more tweets.

Guidelines:

• Each tweet must be tweeted from a writing center’s Twitter account.
• Each initial tweet from the writing center must attach at least one photo of the space they are describing.
• Each tweet must include the hashtag: #writingcenterlove
• Writing centers can tweet as many times as they want.
• Answer the question: What do you love about your writing center space? And why?

Goal:

To get as many writing centers from around the world to take part in this collaborative writing project, sharing both literal and figurative memories, moments, and reasons about why they love their space.

The final collage will be compiled using Storify and will be posted on the Marian E. Wright Writing Center blog and will be the Featured Reading on writingcenters.org (the website of the International Writing Centers Association at http://writingcenters.org ).

Remember, we are sharing memories, moments and making connections with writing centers from across the world.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Megan Breidenstein at mbreiden@umflint.edu