I have been blessed to celebrate many birthdays in my life, but rarely had one seemed so public as mine did yesterday. Facebook revealed to my students what I would not have otherwise, and they showed me plenty of love with "Happy Birthday" wishes from midnight on via that social media site and, of course, Twitter. The love extended throughout the day in the Diederich College of Communication hallways and one of my classes had cookies waiting when we met in the afternoon. I hesitate to mention the "cat greetings" in the class Facebook groups.

Actually, I had been feeling the love all week. On Monday, a student posted in the Digital Journalism II group that #JOUR1100 and #JOUR1550 – "students tweeting for journalism courses" – were among the "100 @MarquetteU Twitter hashtags to watch for," according to the postmarq blog post, "A Field Guide to the Hashtags of @MarquetteU." The blog belongs to Mykl Novak, a Marquette employee and alumnus. As reported on my blog before, my students also can take credit for Novak citing the #muprez tag, for all those many tweets relating to the university's president, the Rev. Scott Pilarz, S.J., or his inauguration in September.

Then, more love two days ago, this time from the student media in Johnston Hall. Guess who made The Marquette Journal's list of "Top 5 Marquette Tweeters"? Alexandra Whittaker's article in the magazine's "College Life" section posted online said that "Lowe uses Twitter to interact with students and to post updates on his blog, and this makes his Twitter feed lively and engaging. It is certainly one to follow." It's definitely humbling to be among "Marquette's most interesting Twitter birds" and I'm especially excited to be cited above @ShitMUDoesntSay.

Alas, not all went as I had hoped on my birthday, given that Marquette's men's basketball team lost its quarterfinal matchup against Louisville in the Big East Tournament. But my wife, Mira, cooked me a lobster dinner. All is well.

The Diederich College of Communication presented Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg as this year's Axthelm Memorial Lecture speaker last week at the Alumni Memorial Union on campus. Hundreds of people packed a ballroom to hear Enberg, a 14-time Emmy Award winner, reflect on his experiences with Al McGuire, his longtime broadcast partner and, of course, the beloved coach who led Marquette's men's basketball team to the 1977 NCAA championship. Calling his lecture "Communicating in a World of Noise," he also shared his five "points of power" for succeeding in journalism: pause, perseverance, presentation, humor and kindness.

Enberg also met with students and classes during his latest visit to Marquette – he served as its commencement speaker in 2009 – including a "news conference" after the lecture for my Digital Journalism I (JOUR 1100) class that my Diederich College colleagues James Pokrywczynski and Julie Rosene arranged. Surprising that only one of my 14 students had heard of Enberg when I first said they would use Twitter to cover his lecture. Certainly, I had heard him exclaim his signature "Oh my!" during countless significant sports events of the past generation.

This was the first live-tweeting experience for most of the students. (Of course, I shared what their predecessors had accomplished by live tweeting Marquette's presidential inauguration last fall.) We had practiced in class the week before and some had used the 2012 Grammy Awards and other recent events to try it out. In class after the lecture, they said the #muenberg live tweeting helped them, among other things, focus on their writing; extend their journalism to as far as Puerto Rico; capture moments not typically reported in news articles, and inform and engage MU alumni, students and employees unable to attend. We then discussed curating social media, employing tools and tips used by many professional news agencies and people worldwide.

Indeed, a few students from my other courses this semester (JOUR 1550 and JOUR 4953) also live-tweeted the lecture for their Storify assignments. And the word is spreading across campus. Last night, the Marquette University Student Government speakers commissioner emailed me to ask if I would assign students to live tweet Morgan Spurlock's campus visit on Thursday. The commissioner wrote that "friends studying journalism" had referred her to me. Actually, some in my JOUR 1550 class already plan to live tweet this event; they even had me change the deadline so they could. Still, I love it that students outside of Johnston Hall appreciate what's happening in my classes – and, yes, hope more of them will answer the commissioner's call.

Finally, it must be shared that #muenberg trended in Milwaukee, reaching the same success that #muprez achieved when my classes live tweeted the inauguration. Another sign of progress: Diederich College Dean Lori Bergen encouraged those tweeting to use #muenberg while welcoming them to the Axthelm lecture. With apologies to Enberg, must admit that when the dean did that, I could only say to myself, "Oh my!"

"We have to be ready for whenever our viral moment happens," Sharif Durhams said while recalling when then-presidential candidate Herman Cain flubbed a foreign policy question posed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's editorial board in November. Durhams, the Journal Sentinel's social media editor and reporter, said the newspaper quickly posted a short video that attracted more than a million views to that day's campaign coverage.

Durhams spoke yesterday to my JOUR 4953 seminar class on how media report on political campaigns and local, state and national elections. The veteran journalist told the students he has three primary jobs: 1) helping to post breaking news on JSOnline; 2) guiding the newsroom in its use of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc., and 3) looking for new ways – think Pinterest! – the paper can use social media to further its storytelling and expand its online audience. "The fun thing about my job is it shifts – because every six months the technology changes," he said.

The North Carolina native also shared how social media helped the Journal Sentinel beat its state and national competition during the huge protests against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's budget cuts last year. "Social media ... taught us that we had to beyond traditional sources to get the news," Durhams said. At the same time, he said, it's important that reporters and editors never allow social media to supersede normal journalism ethics or values.

As much as he enjoys his work, Durhams knows it may not last forever given that social media will soon become second nature for most journalists. He put this way: "It's almost like, 'Do we need a telephone editor? Do we need to teach people how to use the telephone? Well, at least for awhile, we will."

"Great speaker today," James Scotton, who is co-teaching the course with me, said afterward. "Very valuable and the class obviously loved him." Yes, they did. Hoping that Durhams will return this semester to talk more about how the Journal Sentinel is using blogging, Storify and other social media as part of its election coverage.

I had the pleasure of being the guest speaker at a Social Media @Marquette event earlier this month. Tim Cigelske, a communications specialist with the Marquette University Office of Marketing and Communication, asked me to focus on using social media in the classroom – and using it to engage with students away from class. It was a GROW With Marquette event, so my audience included mostly staff and administrators of various non-academic units who were, hopefully, interested in using social media to extend their personal and organizational branding.

So that those present could see someone curate what just happened, I asked Marissa Evans, a junior journalism major in the Diederich College of Communication and a self-described CLT (Chronic Live Tweeter), to capture the hourlong session using Twitter. Her efforts made it possible for me to share some of the highlights of my presentation, "Digital Footprints: Using Social Media in the Classroom and in the Office," using Storify.

I love using Storify to preserve on the Web what happens at an event, whether large or small, for long after it is over. That's right, program coordinators, social media isn't just for increasing attendance and promoting results. It's also for showcasing mission and identity to current and prospective students as well as to alumni.

Anyway, I enjoyed showing how my students use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Storify, Delicious, etc., for their class assignments and journalism pursuits, and how they and I use Facebook and Twitter to interact outside class. Here's hoping that my colleagues across campus will be inspired to maximize social media. As I said in my presentation, I came to Twitter kicking and screaming – but once I started using it for fun, using it for work was so much easier.

I was minding my business at the Journalism Interactive: The Conference on Journalism Education & Digital Media when an interesting tweet appeared among many others on the fast-and-furious live #jiconf stream on Twitter:

Still new at teaching my journalism students how to report, write and edit using social media, #retweetethics certainly interested me, so I quickly tweeted back affirmatively. Honestly, I thought it would lead to learning about such simple matters as using MT to indicate modified tweet. Well, it ended up leading to so much more – including, much to my surprise and pleasure, me recently having, for the first time, an article published in an academic journal.

Ironically, the tweeter – Ginny Whitehouse, an associate professor at Eastern Kentucky University – was sitting two rows behind me at the conference held at the University of Maryland. Whitehouse explained that, as cases and commentaries editor for the Journal of Mass Media Ethics, she needed articles concerning a major lapse in journalism ethics. Her case study stemmed from a fake study claiming to link intelligence and Web browser choice.

Already overwhelmed as a faculty member and graduate school student, I worried about taking on another major assignment, especially since Whitehouse stressed she needed it soon. Ever the student, I initially tried to see if my research for this task could match a similar mandate in my media law course. That didn't work. My first draft submitted to Whitehouse suited the course assignment much better than an ethics journal. But, much to her credit, she would not let me give up and offered great advice on how to proceed. So, too, did Bonnie Brennen, my Diederich College colleague and grad school teacher who is determined to turn me into a critical thinker.

Both Whitehouse and Brennen liked my second draft much better. My article, "An Online Hoax Reminds Journalists to Do Their Duty" – available online and here on my site – is part of a collection of enlightening articles written about the hoax by Whitehouse, Lyn Millner, Wendy Wyatt, David Craig, and Rick Kenney and Kimiko Akita. Must admit it feels good to have an article published in an academic journal, something I didn't see coming so suddenly. When I shared the news with my colleagues at our journalism faculty meeting today, I joked it meant moving further into the dark side. All smiled when someone shot back that I was actually moving closer into the light. Touche´.

As 2011 ends, please allow me to revisit my proudest moment as a journalism faculty member with a new Storify.

In late September, my digital journalism students at Marquette University made the most of an extraordinary campus opportunity – a presidential inauguration – that offered trial-by-fire experience and demonstrated the power of social media as a tool for journalism. Instead of the typical reporting and writing exercise, in which the students would each produce a 500-word story that just I would read – sigh! – they used Twitter to report on the inauguration. Their tweeting allowed countless Marquette alumni and supporters across the world to witness the ceremony live.

Tim Cigelske, a MU communication specialist and the campus social media guru, lauded the students' efforts. "I never thought we would surpass Sweet Sixteen," Cigelske said of the Twitter explosion following the men's basketball team's success last spring. He told my students that not only did their inauguration tweeting do so, it also netted the top eight trending topics in Milwaukee that day – "which is huge." (My Storify includes just a sampling from that day.)

The inauguration exercise also readied my students to use Twitter to cover events as reporters through the term. Indeed, live tweeting was only half of the inauguration assignment. Each student also had to create a Storify about the coverage. (The Poynter Institute offers five types of stories that make good Storifys.)
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No one knew what to expect beforehand. Those among my students who had tweeted regularly had mostly offered youthful banter. I stressed for class-related tweets using complete sentences, abiding AP style and correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, and no long or uncomplimentary hashtags such as #onmywaytowalgreenstobuylicorice and #icouldrantbutiwont. Both classes practiced with the Princess Diana eulogy before the ceremony. Each student then had to produce at least 12 tweets with their class hashtag and #muprez among the 140 characters.

After live tweeting beyond my wildest dreams, the next generation of professional scribes acted like true journalists – they went searching for food, assessed their own performance and found reasons to complain or blame their editor, that is, professor. That's OK. So gratifying when my students' work matters. Cigelske, formerly of The Associated Press, put it best when he told them during his class visit: "It was like you were all Associated Press reporters. You provided the color and the personality of being right there. You pretty much covered the spectrum – from breaking news to context to archival coverage. This is great training for ... your journalism careers, wherever it takes you."

'Tis the season, everyone! Earlier this week, my wife, Mira, received a wonderful digital holiday greeting from a friend via email. It made us smile broadly and was a welcome distraction as I sought to finish grading final exams.

The greeting reminded us of a few years back, when we were looking for a new way to convey holiday greetings to our family, friends and colleagues. In 2002, instead of cards, we mailed and handed out CDs with our favorite Christmas songs. The response was overwhelming. People loved them. So we did it again with another set of songs the next year, and then with other collections two of the next three years. It's gratifying that so many of our friends still play the CDs while wrapping gifts, entertaining guests or doing whatever their heart desires.

For this year, our friend's before-mentioned digital offering inspired us to produce our own holiday greeting – with a little help from our famous neighbors in Hyde Park, Chicago. We hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think. 

It's unclear who knows more about the other: my wife, Mira, or my students. Each student in my Digital Journalism I (JOUR 1100) and Digital Journalism II (JOUR 1550) classes this semester follows her on Twitter (@miralowe) and she does likewise. All I know is there were smiles aplenty when "Mrs. Lowe" appeared in both classes yesterday.

In JOUR 1100, Mrs. Lowe focused on how journalism students can best present themselves to recruiters. "I'm going to talk a little and then you're going to work a little," she said. "That's the deal – I talk, you work." (That's how it goes at home, too, but I shall not digress.) She first urged everyone to have a LinkedIn account – and to check it every day – before introducing the class to vizualize.me, a compelling new way to showcase one's life experiences.

Next, Mrs. Lowe offered advice concerning print versus electronic clippings when applying for internships. "You're kind of in that middle of old-school and new-school (recruiters), and until the old-school retires, you're going to have to do both," she said. "Start out with digital and have paper ready." Then, she started showing off with cuttings.me, an amazing new digital-clipping tool for journalists, bloggers and writers. "Make sure those links work. It's very important," she said before borrowing my admonition: "Don't let someone else's mistake become your mistake."

She spent the rest of her time with JOUR 1100 focusing on the importance of grammar, spelling and punctuation and, more to the students' delight, offering a great deal of helpful tips for crafting successful cover letters.

Later, in JOUR 1550, Mrs. Lowe again presented vizualize.me and cuttings.me and warned against frustrating recruiters with broken links: "Make sure you have a copy of everything you've done. You want to take control of your work and get access to it." Then, more cool social media tools – Paper.li, The Tweeted Times and Klout – before ending her presentation with nine rules for writing online headlines that will top most search-engine lists.

Finally, as Mrs. Lowe was leaving to catch a cab to the Amtrak station, the inevitable praise from her newest fans, at my expense, of course: "She's much better than you." "She's definitely your better half." "When she said her name, I got really excited. I had to contain myself." "It was wonderful meeting your wife – best part of the semester."

Borrowing a favorite phrase my wife and I say often at home: "Just like I planned it."