Social Media for Education

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 classroomhttp://vimeo.com/3722553 • TED conference http://www.ted.com/ • Open Culturehttp://www.oculture.com/ • Teachers TVhttp://www.teachers.tv/ • TeacherTubehttp://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 againhttp://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