3. Advantages of Social Media
Everyone is using it
– it’s almost
guaranteed to reach
its audience
Free of cost
Naturally creative
and intuitive
interfaces
Enable easy sharing
and disseminating of
information
4.
5. With social media, students
can…
Compare and share
notes and resources
Debate and discuss
Contribute more
equally
Learn from one
another
Learn from experts
and others in the field
Get exposed to new
ideas, cultures, and
languages
6. The Flip Side: Potential Pitfalls
Social media is, of
course, social by
nature!
Posts are not always
private, although they
can be made that way
Students (and others)
can say and do things
we’d rather they didn’t
Luckily, severe
incidents are quite
rare, and easy to
avoid
7. Social Media Can Make Learning
Fun
Post important announcements and actually get
them read!
Create group projects like collaborative
projects, scavenger hunts, and round-robin
discussions
Allow students to showcase their unique talents
and interests through pictures and video
Build a community of learners by encouraging
students to share and ask each other questions
Encourage students to connect in more
meaningful, convenient, and personalized ways
8. Facebook
Allows for
private, members-only
groups to be created
Also allows for public
pages to be created for
a class to use for
announcements and
other one-way postings
You don’t have to
“friend” your students –
that’s a personal choice
You can create a
“school-only” Facebook
account strictly for your
class activities
About Groups:
https://www.facebook.co
m/about/groups
About Pages:
https://www.facebook.co
m/about/pages
Great infographic on
Facebook in college
classrooms:
http://www.schools.com/
visuals/collegeprofessors-onfacebook.html
9. Twitter
Lots of neat discussions
can be had in 140
characters or less!
Don’t believe it? Check out
http://twitter.com/FieldingE
ngl102
Keep students engaged
and interested with short
tidbits, helpful hints, and
online resources
Use hashtags to keep
conversations related and
easier to follow
About Twitter:
https://support.twitter.com
Twitter for Teachers:
http://www.schrockguide.
net/twitter-forteachers.html
Ways to use Twitter in
academia:
http://academhack.outsid
ethetext.com/home/2008/
twitter-for-academia/
Twubs – great for
following hashtags:
http://twubs.com
10. Google+
Google has a large
number of socialinfused
features, including the
popular Hangout tool
Also, consider Google
Docs as a
collaborative tool or
an alternative to Office
Google Drive
(formerly Docs):
http://drive.google.co
m
Hangouts:
http://www.google.co
m/hangouts
Google’s Education
page with tutorials
and more:
http://www.google.co
m/edu/teachers/
11. Pinterest
Pinterest as a teaching
tool? You bet!
Pinterest can take
information on any topic
and make it visual, userfriendly and easy to
categorize and share
So many resources are
already available –
students can easily
browse and repin things
they find
Similar sites include
Scoop.it and Learni.st
Pinterest Help Center:
https://en.help.pinterest.
com/home
The OLT Pinboard:
http://www.pinterest.com
/pncolt/technology-tothe-rescue/
How colleges are using
Pinterest for education:
http://teachthought.com/
social-media/howcolleges-are-usingpinterest-in-education/
12. YouTube
YouTube provides a great
platform for students to
share and publish as well
as learn
We all know there is a
tremendous amount of
valuable content out there
– just search and you’ll
find something good!
Armed with smartphones
or other camera
devices, students can
easily create and upload
their own work
Great for reviews and
study
groups, presentations, and
group projects
YouTube Education
University channel:
http://www.youtube.com/ch
annel/HCScmg5b9x0xQ
10 YouTube Channels to
make you smarter:
http://mashable.com/2013/
04/04/youtube-education/
Using online video in the
classroom:
http://www.edutopia.org/yo
utube-educational-videosclassroom
13. What’s integrated into
BlackBoard?
Blogs – for student thoughts to be shared
and commented on
Wikis – for fluid student conversations and
group document editing
Collaboration – “chat room” and whiteboard
function similar to Adobe Connect (requires
Java)
Kaltura – media sharing tool for videos you
upload (yours or someone elses)
Mashups – integration from
YouTube, Slideshare.net, and Flickr
available
14. Caveats and Parting Thoughts
Social Media can be a terrific tool for
learning
But, it can be a little “messy” – there’s a
lot to negotiate, and a lot to keep up with
No tool is perfect, either
Requires patience and a willingness to
try something different, or think about an
old activity in a new way
16. Resources
Overcoming Hurdles to Social Media in Education:
http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/overcoming-hurdlessocial-media-education
Great blog on social media in higher ed:
http://blog.reyjunco.com
Social Media resource round-up:
http://www.edutopia.org/social-media-education-resources
Six ways to use social media in education:
http://cit.duke.edu/blog/2012/04/six-ways-to-use-socialmedia-in-education/
Friedman, L.W., Friedman, H.H. (2013). Using social
media technologies to enhance online learning. Journal of
Educators Online, 10(1). Retrieved from
http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume10Number1/Fried
man.pdf.
Notas do Editor
Welcome to Social Media for Teaching and Learning, created by Staci Trekles at the Office of Learning Technology.
Social media and Web 2.0 allow students to create and participate in the web instead of just reviewing posted comments. Web 2.0 tools can be found at address all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and can create environments where students can actively engage in the learning process. Social media has the added advantage of generally being free for use, and easy to learn how to use. Students tend to be very familiar with many popular tools, such as Facebook and YouTube, and indeed, many faculty use some of these tools for their personal entertainment and to keep up with colleagues and friends as well. When these tools are brought into the classroom, they become a familiar and welcome sight to many students today, due to their popularity. When we meet students “where they are” we may have a better opportunity to reach them and connect more meaningfully with them.
Social media has many advantages, especially the fact that it is often free, and usually very easy to use. These tools are naturally good at creating innovative and intuitive environments because they have specific purposes, and are designed for all users to be able to sit down and learn quickly. They also are easy to integrate into a variety of other online media, like BlackBoard, and allow for the quick and simple dissemination of information.
This infographic highlights a study done recently by Pearson in regard to social media at the college level. Many faculty were found to be using social media personally and professionally, but less so in teaching. However, about a third were using it in their classrooms already, especially Facebook, blogs, and wikis. LinkedIn has become the most popular platform for professional use, such as communicating and collaborating with like-minded colleagues. Teaching students about these tools, especially those with professional advantages like LinkedIn, becomes nearly essential to ensure that students are prepared for the world beyond college.
With social media, you can create lessons and online environments where students can collaborate, compare and share resources, contribute equally to discussions, learn from one another as well as people outside of the classroom, and get exposed to a variety of different ideas, cultures, languages, and media.
Of course, no tool is perfect, and social media is no exception. Much concern has been raised about privacy in the social world, and the fact that people may not represent themselves honestly online. On the other hand, some students and others may represent themselves too honestly and openly, and may share information about themselves that is not appropriate for the classroom. Luckily, severe privacy “incidents” are quite severe and can be easily avoided through education and taking an honest look at one’s own social media outlets. Students at the college level should be made aware of what is appropriate and inappropriate to post in professional domains, and should be helped along the way by their professors. To simply shun the technologies that students love will not help educate them about their proper use, but trying to use them with students and learning together does. In addition, it is important to note that we are not suggesting that all interaction with students be replaced by social media outlets. These tools are simply just some of the available tools for increasing student engagement, especially in the online realm. In addition to having students create presentations, write papers, respond to discussion threads, and complete exams, social media can simply be yet another way to create teachable moments and assessments of learning.
Social media does have the ability to make learning fun! One of the fundamental uses is posting important announcements and other information about your course. Students spend a large amount of time on social media, so why not reach out to them where they are? They are far more likely to get the message than if it is in a place where they must make a special effort to log in and view. In addition, group projects can be made more engaging using social media, such as having students share a Pinterest board and post different scavenger hunt items, or ask them to work together to collaborate on a presentation or other project. Social media gives students a platform for sharing themselves and their talents in a way that is easy and fun – most social tools accommodate pictures, text, and video in simple and flexible ways that are easy to view and share. Finally, by reaching out to students where they are, you are more likely to get them to see you and each other as members of a learning community. You are now no longer just names behind a screen, but actual people with thoughts to share. When a community comes together in this way, learning becomes more meaningful, relevant, and personal.
Facebook does allow for privacy! You can create Pages and Groups as a “business user” instead of using your personal account, allowing you to create a different persona for your class as opposed to your personal Facebook profile. And you definitely do not have to friend your students in order to enjoy Facebook as a learning tool. There is little to no danger of them seeing something you don’t want them to see if you maintain separate profiles, and protect your personal profile from being seen by those who are not your friend. Of course, on the other hand, friending your students can make them see you as more of a “human being,” which may be an advantage and desirable to you. Tread with caution in this realm, but know that many faculty do indeed friend their college students and experience nothing but benefits as a result, including collegial relationships that last well beyond the semester. The links on this page lead you to useful information about groups and pages, as well as some useful facts and information about using Facebook in a college course.
Twitter can be an interesting and hard to negotiate landscape – there are millions of 140-character “tweets” everywhere that it becomes difficult at times to separate the good information from the “flotsam and jetsam.” But, hashtags – those little # signs in front of everything – can help. Simply devise a hashtag for your class or assignment and now everyone can follow the conversation much more easily. For a great example, check out Dr. Fielding’s English 102 class and see how she is using Twitter to keep her students engaged with questions, announcements, and direct feedback on things they do for her class. The other resources on this slide will help you get started with Twitter, take full advantage of ideas for classroom projects, and even get a handle on hashtags with twubs.com.
Google has a host of useful features for educators and students, including Google+ social media, which is similar to Facebook. You have a “news feed” for posts by you and your friends, as well as various apps to communicate with them through. However, Google+ is typically considered not as popular as Facebook for social communication, although the Hangouts tool is considered a great alternative to Skype or other synchronous tools. Here, students and educators can get together online to chat through video and/or audio, as well as through text chat. Google Hangouts also allows you to share documents with other members of the group, and you can have up to 10 video call participants at one time. Google Docs, or now Drive as they call it, is also a great tool for collaboration, as you can share documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, and even drawings with multiple users and see what they are typing as they are typing it if you are all working on the same document together. This brings the idea of a collaborative paper or project beyond wikis to a whole new level, as synchronous chat can be occurring while you are working, right in the same space. In addition, for those students who do not have Microsoft Office available to them, Google Docs can be a great alternative, and of course, all of these tools are always free.
Pinterest is a neat and very visual service designed to allow you to share pictures from websites that link to those websites, thus allowing you to create a visual collection of bookmarks on related topics. For example, if you check out the OLT Pinboard, “Technology to the Rescue”, all pins are grouped as they are related to online teaching and learning, and using technology in the classroom. Other similar sites to Pinterest include Scoop.it and Learni.st, both sites designed around similar principles of curating the best information about a given topic. These sites can help students improve their information literacy as well as their understanding about a specific topic, and you can create boards that allow them to look as well as add their own findings.
YouTube is well-known to many faculty as a place where great videos (as well as some not so great ones) can be found. YouTube actually has special Education channels now, where you can find curated content on many topics without having to wade through various videos of pets doing funny things (which are great, but not always that educational). There are a number of great channels dedicated to various topics that are worth checking out, and many different ways to integrate these videos into your teaching. Perhaps you ask students to share at least one video a week on a topic, or perhaps you ask them to review a video and post discussions on their reactions. Whatever you want to do, you can certainly accomplish a lot with a resource as rich as YouTube.
BlackBoard has some social media tools integrated into the Course Tools area, including Blogs and Wikis, which are tools for student-student communication and collaboration. Both can be used in ways that take typical discussions to the next level, and enhance projects and planning. BlackBoard Learn also has a chat room function under the Course Tools item Collaboration. This can be either a Virtual Classroom with a whiteboard or simply a synchronous chat, and these items do use Java to function. So, some browsers may have trouble loading them up properly. However, they are similar to Adobe Connect and may be a good alternative if you are looking for one. Kaltura allows you to post your own videos and they become streaming videos available for insertion into any area of your course. Also under the Mashups tool alongside Kaltura, you can integrate individual YouTube videos, presentations from Slideshare.net (an excellent “YouTUbe for PowerPoints” service) and Flickr (for images).
Social media can be a great tool for learning, but the process of integrating it, especially the first time, may be messy. Don’t be discouraged – try and experiment to see what works well for your students and your class. Like anything, instant results and optimal feedback won’t necessarily happen overnight. Using social media effectively for your class requires a little patience, effort, and creativity to make it work well. Think about old activities in new ways, and see how social media might be able to benefit you. The things you might be able to do might be very surprising – and a lot of fun!
Please contact us and visit http://pnc.edu/distance for all workshop notes, links, and training needs. Thank you!
Some additional articles and resources about using social media for teaching and learning.