Social Media for Education

Social Media for Education Paul Ayres, Education Editor Intute: Social Sciences intute .ac. uk / socialsciences

What we will cover today
A quick introduction to these Social Media technologies: blogs, Delicious, SlideShare, podcasts, YouTube and Twitter
Some suggestions / examples for their possible use in teaching and learning
How could you use them in your teaching?
Go to http://escelearn.wordpress.com/

How we will do it
30 mins presentation, 30 mins hands-on
Explore the links on the blog or have a go at the exercises
There is one exercise per service
Plus an advanced exercise for each
And a blog related exercise for each
So if you start with the blog exercise and finish them all, you may end up with something looking a little like …

A word from my sponsor …
Intute: Social Sciences - a guide to the best of the web for education and research
Try intute .ac. uk / socialsciences and click on education
Nearly 1000 high quality education Internet resources
Also produce the Internet for Education - internet research skills tutorial

Blogs – what are they
Online diary style website
Quick and easy web publishing
Offer instant communication
Regularly updated
Require little technical knowledge
A social / networking activity
Links to other online resources
Try the Guide to Using Blogs in Economics

Blogs - potential uses
Replacing standard class web pages
Professor-written blogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course
Organization of in-class discussion
Organization of intensive seminars where students have to provide weekly summaries of the readings
Requiring students to write their own blogs as part of their grade
Henry Farrell, Crooked Timber

Blogs – potential uses
Writing up as you go along
Floating new or embryonic ideas
Dissemination of research results
Take advantage of the “invisible college” of fellow academics
Engaging with the public to raise the level of debate on education issues
Sidestepping the mainstream media for publicity
Education blogosphere dominated by policy and e-learning issues
Great potential for reflection?

Delicious – what is it
Social Bookmarking website
Save and store bookmarks online
Organise them with tags or keywords
Be social – follow other bookmarkers and send / receive links
Alas education is an overused word http://delicious.com/tag/education

Delicious – potential uses
Keeping the same set of bookmarks if using more than one computer
Organise collection of resources around an agreed tag – escelearn
One link for related resources http://delicious.com/cfbloke/escelearn
Social bookmarking – develop a network and share the load
An alternative search engine
… and many more from Gabriela Grosseck

SlideShare - what is it?
Upload PowerPoint presentations so they are freely available online
Easily embeddable in other services e.g. blogs
Add an mp3 soundtrack / narration and sync it with the slides
YouTube for PowerPoint
Community features such as tags, comments, favourites, related SlideCasts etc.
http://www. slideshare .net/

SlideShare - an example

SlideShare - an example
Initially presented to 25 people at the DEE conference in 2007
Now viewed over over 2000 times, downloaded over 90 times, embedded in 5 other websites
Adding an audio track makes a SlideShare much more useful, making it a SlideCast
http://www. slideshare .net/ cfbloke /the-effective-use-of- blogs -in-economics-education/

SlideShare - possible uses
Disseminating lecture material for revision purposes
Discuss lecture material using the comments feature to aid understanding
As a student assignment assessing virtual presentation skills
Find other presentations on your topic - save reinventing the wheel
Building up a body of resources over time on a particular topic
Drawing together conference / seminar materials using a common tag or keyword

Podcasts – what are they?
A podcast is …
Audio – videos are more likely to be learning objects and vlogging does not need RSS
Regular – one audio file does not constitute a podcast, must have a sense of regularity
Syndicated via RSS – otherwise it’s an online audio file that has been possible for years
… a bit of a fundamentalist viewpoint !

Podcasts – potential uses
Distance learning / self-paced learning
Advanced or supplementary material
Choice depending on learning style
Promotion of research
Topical updates related to lecture material
Replace the lecture
Student assessment and feedback
Collecting data in the field
… more from Podcasting for Learning in Universities

Podcasts – further tips
A Bakers Dozen of Practical Podcasting Tips – less theory, more practice
Podcasting and Audio in the Social Sciences - overview of key audio resources
My Podcasting Life … or the Reverse Obama Effect - lessons from various podcasting experiments
Podcasts links from Delicious - with an emphasis on podcasting in HE

YouTube – what is it?
Number one video sharing site on the Internet, top 10 of all Internet sites
Approx. 40% share of online video market - if it's not on YouTube, it doesn't exist?
Ten of millions of videos are watched each and every day
Vast majority of videos are "user generated content" - made by people like you and me

Teaching on YouTube

Not a place for learning, although we learnt a lot there
"Vlogs depend upon the intimate communication of the spoken word. Corporate videos are driven by strong images, sounds, and sentiments. This underscores how YouTube is not the level or uniform playing field people want to pretend it to be."
http://www. oculture .com/2008/04/teaching_on_ youtube .html
http://www. youtube .com/ mediapraxisme

A Vision of Students Today

Life beyond YouTube
A day in the life of my classroom http://vimeo.com/3722553
TED conference http://www.ted.com/
Open Culture http://www.oculture.com/
Teachers TV http://www.teachers.tv/
TeacherTube http://www.teachertube.com/

YouTube – possible uses
Distance learning
Supplementary lectures (e.g. research skills, presentation skills)
Contextualising an issue, e.g. old news footage
Perspectives for students to examine critically (news coverage, activist videos, TED lectures)
Screen capture (e.g. demonstrating software)
Short humour items to break up a long lecture
Student video assignment?

Twitter - what is it?
Asks what are you up to right now?
Limited to just 140 characters
Like the status update feature on Facebook - and that's all
Follow people you know, those you don't, organisations, publications
Part blog, part social networking site, and part IM tool
http://twitter.com/

Twitter - an example
Follow everything published from the Intute : Education section plus blog posts
Also follow other organisations such as Education Week, Futurelab, BBC Education and individual academics
7 things you should know about Twitter by EDUCAUSE
http:// educause . edu / ir /library/ pdf /ELI7027. pdf

Twitter - possible uses
Pointers to online resources based around a course
Student reminders about deadlines
Breaking down barriers and getting to know others over this "virtual water cooler"
Keeping up to date for you and students
Instant lecture feedback - are you Twittering about this presentation?

What’s next?
All the links http://delicious.com/cfbloke/escelearn
In context in the blog http://escelearn.wordpress.com/
View this again http://www.slideshare.net/cfbloke/social-media-for-education

Thanks for listening
Paul Ayres
[email_address]
Intute: Social Sciences
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/
… and click on Education

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http://med20course.wordpress.com	1018
http://disruptology.com	398
http://scienceroll.com	142
http://libguides.starkstate.edu	132
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	23
http://myportal.upou.edu.ph	21
http://socmedevanger.blogspot.com	14
http://www.slideshare.net	12
url_unknown	6
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	5
https://escelearn.wordpress.com	4
http://www.scoop.it	2
http://feeds.feedburner.com	1
http://74.125.47.132	1
http://ttcpolicy.wcboe.k12.md.us	1
http://upou.broadrick.net	1
http://a0.twimg.com	1
http://ranksit.com	1
http://www.socmedevanger.com	1

Social Media for Education

by cfbloke on Mar 20, 2009

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Social Media for Education — Presentation Transcript