Using Social Media in Education Part 2

In my first post in this series (which you can read here) we discussed the ways certain resources and channels can be used in combination to meet learning objectives. So, how does social media fit into this system? What are the strengths and weaknesses of services like Facebook and Twitter in the educational environment? Let’s start by asking …

What’s so great about social media?

Why has social media become so popular?

1. Speed: Thanks to e-mail, chat, text messaging and Twitter, communication is faster than ever before.

2. Access: Social media channels are available to a wide variety of devices, beyond computers; cell phones are no longer “phones” in the traditional sense. They are now communication centers, and using them you can call your friends, e-mail your contacts, surf the web, use search engines, post a photo on your Facebook wall, post to your blog, send a tweet, upload a video to YouTube, find your friends using geolocation, as well organize your contacts and maintain your calendar. Basically, you never, ever, need to be out of touch. And watch for the upcoming wave of augmented realityapplications for mobile devices: using this software and your phone’s camera, you can basically add layers of information on top of real time images or video. Imagine walking down a street, pointing your phone’s camera at a restaurant and instantly being able to read reviews about their food on your phone screen, and you’re starting to get an idea.

3. Collaboration: Perhaps the most powerful aspect of new social media is how it allows people to share information with each other. Facebook is popular not because it allows you to tell the world all about yourself; you’ve been able to do that with a website for years. It’s popular because it allows the world to talk back to you in a simple, easy to use way. Just came from a great party? Post the pictures on your Facebook wall and watch as everyone else from the party comments on them. Then watch as other people comment on those first comments. Then link your pictures to the pictures of another party-goer to create a shared photo album on-line. This new level of collaboration allows for instantaneous feedback on any effort you post on the web, and that can get very addictive! And it doesn’t stop there: if you come across something you like on another website, you can share it to Twitter or Facebook with just the click of a button.

4. Personalization: More and more, social media channels are about personalizing your on-line experience. This goes beyond simply choosing what colors you want for your profile page. Google Reader allows you to choose what websites and news feeds you want to receive and organize them by category in one central location, letting you create your own newspaper. Twitter and Facebook let you choose who you want to follow or friend, and send you updates about that person as soon as they are posted. In short, social media allows you to select exactly what you want to know, when you want to know it and how you want the information packaged.

5. Ease of use: To immerse yourself in the world of social media requires virtually no computer experience. If you know how to log into your e-mail account, you can create your own personalized blog and be posting your own ideas and opinions in minutes. Want to send a message to the world? Open your Twitter account, type your message, hit enter and its there for all your followers to see. The point is the technology used in these applications is so simple a five year old could use them. And many do.

One of the latest trends in social media has be aggregating. If you are thinking it must be a big hassle to keep up on all your social media channels all the time, you’re right. But aggregating allows us to collect all the information from all our channels in one place; to give you an idea of how this works, you can send a message from Twitter that will automatically update your Facebook status, your webpage and your blog, with pictures or audio or video if you included it in the original message. All of your friends will be receiving the same information, no matter what channel they are using to follow you.

6. Price: 99.9% of social media tools are completely free. Everyone can understand the power of that! This is especially important when you look at the impact of a service like Skype, which allows you to call and video conference with people any where in the world free of charge. Remember pen pals? Think Skype pals, where students can talk with another student half way around the globe for less than the price of a stamp.

What social media channels should I use?

Now let’s analyze some of the more popular social media services based on their potential strengths and weaknesses in an educational setting. Before we start, it should be noted that the biggest weakness with all these channels is their dependency on technology and the internet; that’s a given. Their biggest strength? They’re all free (or extremely low cost).

Facebook:

What is it?: Probably the most popular social media site out there (or least the most recognized). Facebook is a social networking website, where individuals create a profile page (or “wall”) that can include updates about their lives, photos, audio or videos and link to other “friends” to share this information. “Friends” can then link to this content from their own profile pages, mash it together to create new media channels (photo and video albums) and comment on what has been posted. You can also start groups around specific your class or specific topics and create fan pages.

Strengths: Easy to use and a great aggregation point, since different channels (Twitter, blog posts, etc) can feed into one profile page. If you need all of your students to collect on one site, this would be a great place to start.

Weaknesses: Not suitable for posting large amounts of text. Security and privacy are definitely issues with Facebook, especially with the recent changes to their Terms of Service. Communication is basically limited to leaving comments in the forum.

www.facebook.com

Blogs

What is it?: A blog is basically a personal website where you can share your thoughts, ideas and opinions with others, either using text, audio or video. You are in fact reading my blog on WordPress right now.

Strengths: Blogs work well for posting written content, especially if you want to blend in pictures, audio or video (when you post your message as an audio file it is often called “podcasting”). WordPress is only one of several blog services, but it is very easy to use and offers you free hosting, templates for blog appearance and tutorials for writing your blog. You can also invite people to see your blog without making it fully public, so it’s useful for posting content you only want your class to see. You can also post to your blog from e-mail or from Twitter, so adding content from home or your mobile device (assuming it has internet access) is very easy.

Additionally, you can add different authors to your blog, which makes it an excellent collaboration tool, especially for peer review. Imagine granting your students “Author” status on your blog so they can upload essays, songs or artwork. Then other students can post comments or opinions about the work. Or posting a math problem as part of an in-class contest and having students post their solutions in the comments section. Very interactive and very engaging.

Weaknesses: Creating an interesting and well organized blog can be time consuming and may require a bit more technical knowledge than creating a Facebook page, but don’t let this stop you from trying. Visitors to your blog can also post comments, so you need to review these so malicious comments don’t slip through. WordPress sends you a notification via e-mail when a new comment has been added and you can approve or deny it before it is made public. Communication is basically limited to leaving comments in the forums and e-mail.

www.wordpress.org

Twitter

What is it?: Twitter is the new kid on the block, but has quickly grown in popularity over the last year. Twitter is basically a simple posting service that allows you to create 140 character messages and send them to a common public board. People can choose to follow your messages (or “tweets”) and you can choose to follow others.

Strengths: This is about as easy as it gets; imagine sending a (very) short e-mail to everyone. You can now add links, pictures, audio and video to your tweets. And the influx of information is truly amazing. By being creative, Twitter can have some powerful uses. Need an example? Go to www.historicaltweets.com, where you can follow the adventures of some of history’s most famous figures (Lincoln, Lewis and Clark, Sacajawea … ELVIS!) as they tweet about some of the most important moments in their lives. There is also now the option of tweeting to text messages, so students don’t need internet on their cell phones to receive the messages. Twitter is addictive!

Weaknesses: What can you share in 140 characters? The addition of links and media integration makes Twitter a little more useful, but it is still limited by the size of the message (although some people think this is its strength: remember the rule of KISS: Keep It Short and Simple). Still, as the example above shows, a little creativity can go a long way; what about tweeting daily study tips to your students? Or using tweets to remind them of homework assignments and upcoming tests? You can tweet a link to a website you found that may help them with their project. Finally, when you start following a lot of people, the influx of messages can be truly overwhelming; not every tweet is going to be a gold mine of information, and sometimes the good ones can get lost in the deluge. Yes, Twitter is addictive, but it takes practice!

www.twitter.com

Skype

What is it?: Skype is the grandaddy of Voice over Internet Communication. Download the software onto your computer, create your account, upload your contacts, dial a friend with a click of a button and start talking.

Strengths: Where do I start? Free phone calls and video conferences with anyone in the world who has a Skype account? Integrated chat functions? Good quality voice reproduction? Barely noticeable lag time? Long distance calls to non-Skype numbers for pennies a minute? Take your pick. How can you use it? One-on-one distance tutoring is very popular. Or broadcasting your class via Video Skype so absent students can “attend” in real time. All you need is a laptop, internet connection, webcam and microphone and you’re all set!

Weaknesses: Only a couple I can think of: when you conference with more than three people at a time, the delay increases, and Skype for your cell phone isn’t free.

www.skype.com

DimDim

If you need a free service with more true on-line conferencing capabilities, you can try DimDim; their free service includes VoIP services with video for up to 20 people, an on-line interactive white board, and sharing of Power Point Presentations, websites, and computer desktops.

Strengths: Same as Skype, but with even more interactivity.

Weaknesses: Slow at times and there is a definite delay when you have more than 10 people at a “meeting”. You can only share Power Point presentations, not Word documents or Excel files. You can only show websites that do not require cookies, which are needed to log into many different sites, so that limits you. But it can still do a lot and it’s free!

www.dimdim.com

YouTube

What is it?: Most of us know YouTube as a site that hosts user generated videos on a variety of topics (some of which defy understanding). But it is much more than that. Once you create a YouTube account, you can create a private channel where you can upload videos (and can invite others to upload videos) that can only be shared with a specific group (your class for example). And with the popularity of video camera functions on cell phones, creating video content has never been easier. If you like you can link to a video from Twitter, Facebook, or embed a video directly in your blog from YouTube.

Strengths: Video has an obvious appeal for visual learners, who tend to get overlooked in most classrooms. Creating video is easy and virtually free with today’s cell phone technology, so it is easy to add a “video component” to class projects. You can also record your classes for later review or for students who were absent, or add additional material as part of a homework assignment. In order to use most videos available on YouTube, the creators usually only request that you credit them in the blog.

Weaknesses: Creating good videos can be time consuming and takes practice. As for YouTube itself, the Google ads that pop-up at the start of the video can be annoying.

www.youtube.com

Google’s Suite of Tools

If you thought Google was just about search, think again. It would take too long to describe every single service Google offers, so I’ll just highlight a few:

Google Docs: upload word documents and spreadsheets and allow others to collaborate on them. Comments and changes can be tracked, and multiple versions saved.

Google Earth: A downloadable, interactive globe with a mapping program that can synchronize with Google Maps to show “geo tags” of popular locations. Great for geography and history classes!

Google Maps: Google’s mapping service has now reached street level; zoom in from high level to low level and add “geo tags” to your maps for popular locations. Choose different views (traditional map or satellite view) and update your own location on your maps using the GPS function in your phone.

Google Wave: This is still a pre-beta service and can only be accessed by invitation, but people are already talking about how this new on-line, real-time communication and collaboration tool will impact education. Check out the Introduction to Google Wave video below:

Google Voice: Like Skype, but free for your cell phone. Google also has a video chat function that can be used from a gmail e-mail account that works very well.

Google Reader: News and information aggregator; you basically choose what websites and information sites you want to follow, and the Reader compiles all the updates from all the sites in one location. It’s like having your own personal newspaper or magazine filled only with the stuff you want to read.

Strengths: You can access all of these services using just one username and password, and they are all free.

Weaknesses: Vary from service to service, but the overall quality is absolutely amazing when you consider the price. You do need to create a gmail account to get started using the applications.

You can start downloading Google’s products and services starting here:

Google Suite: here.

Google Earth here.

Google Map Maker here.

You can request an invitation to Google Wave here and Google Voice here (please note that Google Voice is only available in the U.S. at this time).

Google Reader here.

In the next post, I’ll discuss how you can choose the right resource to meet your different objectives.

Did I miss any great social media channels or tools? Are you already using social media in the classroom? What are using and how are you using it?

You can read Part 3 of this series here.

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