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

2. 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/

3. 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 …

5. 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

8. 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

10. 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

11. 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?

13. 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

15. 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

16. 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/

17. SlideShare - an example

18. 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/

19. 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

20. 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 !

22. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. Teaching on YouTube

27. 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

28. A Vision of Students Today

29. 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/

30. 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?

31. 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/

33. 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

34. 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?

35. 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

36. Thanks for listening
Paul Ayres
paul.ayres@bristol.ac.uk
Intute: Social Sciences
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/
… and click on Education