Defining Social Media / Social Networking and what’s in it for me
Web content such as blogs and wikis, created by individuals or a collaboration of individuals. Often times, social media content is intended as the starting point for larger conversations.
www.buzzlogic.com/resources/documentation/terms.php
Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social media
Social media is both a set of technologies and the way in which people use those technologies to communicate and interact with each other.
Another way to refer to Social Media is Social Networking which refers, again, to the way in people use these technologies to communicate and collaborate (network) with each other.
The main advantage of these social media tools is that we can engage more diverse learning styles and create more engaging and interactive activities and assignments for our students while, at the same time, attempting to create a sense of community and a more civil conversation among the members of a class or group.
Using social media tools like the ones below can help your learners; after all… they are more likely to participate in Facebook or Twitter than in a face to face discussion so why not take advantage of the tools that students are already using?
I have to admit my biases in the use of interview and commentary as exercises using these new technologies. My background is in cultural anthropology and with interviewing and participant observation as my main research methodologies. These methodologies make it easier to sell using video or audio as record of those interviews.
Sample Applications and Their Use
Below are some examples of how we can use Social Media tools/applications in a classroom environment. These are by no means the only examples or the only social media tools. If you have another tool or another application please leave a comment with the information to expand the resources on this post.
Blogs
Blogs (short for Web logs) are individual or group journals kept online. Most of the major Blog systems such as WordPress and Blogger provide free accounts or the possibility of hosting the blog on your own website.
What are the advantages of a blog over regular written assignments?
For the purpose of this exercise we will assume that students will be using free blogs created at http://www.wordpress.com. You and your students can create your blogs using the instructions from Creating a blog in wordpress.com.
The first thing to do is to collect all the blog addresses and post them in a central page in your LMS course or class wiki or web site. This will allow easier access to the blogs for the entire class in order to complete the assigned activities.
Some examples of blogs you can ask your students to write:
- Class Reflection: Ask the students to reflect on the day’s classes, to add additional material and to comment on at least 3 classmates’ reflections
- Team Writing Projects: WordPress allows multiple authors to work collaboratively in the same blog. Ground rules must be established to prevent accidental deletions of the content
- Position Statements: In preparation for a simulation exercise or to help students develop and defend a position ask each class member to write their position about a given topic. Emphasis should be put in research and developing a sound and coherent argument.
- Interview Reports: Individual students or groups of students can conduct interviews and post the results to their blogs for review and comments.
- Self Initiated Projects: Within the boundaries of the class and with instructor’s approval
Youtube
Using Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/) as part of a class project is more involved as it requires additional equipment, such as cameras, tripods and microphones and preparation (while it is possible to improvise a complete video shoot it is not recommended). The results can then be posted to Youtube for review and comment.
Some examples of activities that can be recorded and uploaded to Youtube:
- Survey Interviews: Either formal or informal surveys can be video taped and uploaded to Youtube. Classmates and Instructors and then view the video and comment on the interview itself or the results of the interview.
- Commentary: Particularly for situations that either involve current events or a set of events (such as simulation) that need to be researched before an opinion can be formulated. Youtube provides a Video Response feature where you can reply to a video with one of your own in addition to any written commentary you want to leave for the video publisher
- Position Statements: In preparation for a simulation exercise or to help students develop and defend a position ask each class member to write their position about a given topic. Emphasis should be put in research and developing a sound and coherent argument.
del.icio.us
I see Del.icio.us (http://www.delicious.com/) best use is as a research tool. The fact that it can be incorporated directly to the Firefox browser (see https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4599 for more information about adding Del.icio.us to your web browser) makes it easier to bookmark and annotate links and resources on the web to later share them with the class and with the world if desired.
Specific examples of activities include:
- Bookmarks of interest: Have the students collect, tag and documents that are relevant to a personal area of research or interests. For example: For art education students
- Research Bibliography: Rather than allow the students to research an area of personal significance, ask them to put their research for a project or paper online. While online resources are not as trustworthy as printed ones they are more readily available and this kind of project can lead, to discussion about how to evaluate web sources
Wikis
Perhaps the most obvious use for wikis is collaborative writing. Teams of students develop written product for critique by the class and/or present their work in a formal presentation to the rest of the class. Milestones should be established in terms of drafts and due dates lest the students take the wiki as a license to wait until the last possible minute to complete their assignments.