New Technology Report - Social Media
By Fab 4 EducationWhat is Social Media? What does it do?
Social media consists of a variety of online technology tools that enable people to communicate and share information and resources via the Internet. Social media include text, audio, video, images, podcasts, and other multimedia communications. In Web 2.0 terms, this would be a website that gives you information, but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as simple as asking for your comments, of letting you vote on an article, or as complex as recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interest.
Social Media plays a huge role as a resource for news and information. Interesting news can go viral on the Internet because we love to share our world and knowledge with people we know. Keeping up with our family and friends is possible through social media. Pictures are now being shared through social media. In addition, social media acts as a form of entertainment. Television shows and live contests are able to involve their audiences through the use of social media. How many times has your vote been solicited by television shows to help decide who should be a winner? This is an everyday action taken by many people without consciously knowing that they are actively involved in social media.
Many companies have used social media for marketing and promotion to expose their new and upcoming product line. Prospective markets are reached as long as they have access to mobile phones or web based social media applications. To add more, many people, through social media, share a lot of business information.
The best way to think of social media is to break it down. What is media? Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication. Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television. Social media on the other hand, gives you the ability to communicate with the information you have received.
What is Social Media being used for? What are some of the more creative and interesting uses? What are people saying about it?
The most popular and common social media tools have become globally recognized and are now part of our culture. Applications like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are used everyday by millions to connect and share information. The main uses of social media are communication, collaboration, entertainment and multimedia sharing. The image below shows an abstract of some of the uses that social media has:
Users have embraced social media applications and have found many ways to take advantage of them. You can find abundant information on the Web of inspiring ways to use social media in the classroom. Take a look at this article: 100 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media in the Classroom. Social media has been used for accomplishing good deeds, such as: to raise funds or awareness on important issues, to fight crime and to improve healthcare. What are people saying about it? There are mixed opinions on the use of social media. There’s a lot of concern on how children and teenagers are using it. Just like it is possible to do great positive things with these applications, they can also do great harm when used irresponsibly. However, if we focus on the positive opportunities, we find sets of motivating comments like the ones in this article:
Three concrete examples of Social Media in use in the area of education
- Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing social media site that can be utilized as an educational tool. An important characteristic of Flickr which makes it so applicable in the classroom is the ability to form groups, so users can determine who can see the photos they upload to the site. By organizing groups of parents and students exclusive to specific class, teachers can insure only those students/parents will be accessing or commenting on uploaded photos. One way educators can take advantage of this technology is by posting photos of student projects such as artwork, science fair projects, and so on, so parents can see their children’s work and classmates can post comments on each other’s accomplishments. Through the implementation of Flickr in the classroom, gone are days when parents would need to wait until open house or conferences to see their children’s work displayed on the walls of the school. Flickr also allows for users to develop slide shows of photos they have taken. This feature can be utilized as a teaching tool or as a means for students to exhibit what they have learned. Teachers can build slide shows of photos with captions to teach a vast array of subject matter. For example, a teacher could take photos of the various stages of plant growth over time, upload the photos to Flickr, add captions to each photo describing the particular seen each photo, and then organize those photos to play in the proper sequence in a slide show. Doing so would allow students to witness the actual stages of plant growth in a short period of time at school or on a home computer. On the other hand, if a teacher wanted his or her students to learn about plant growth through a more constructivist approach, he or she could have his students plant their own seeds, photograph their plants as they progress through development, and create their own slide shows highlighting the various stages of plant growth. Flickr also lends itself well to developing online portfolios of student work, especially in realm of visual art and similar disciplines in which how a student’s work appears (as opposed to how it reads or sounds) is important. deviantART, Photobucket, Picasa and SmugMug are all similar to Flickr in their basic function. They allow for photo uploading and sharing. They also allow users to organize groups for sharing and construct slide shows. Some differences, however, do exist between Flickr and the latter mentioned photo sharing sites. Photobucket, for example, allows for users to edit and enhance photos as does SmugMug. Picasa also makes it possible for users to enhance photos, but it exisits as an application which is downloaded to a desktop whereas the other photo sharing sites function solely as websites.
- VoiceThread
VoiceThread is another sharing site, but it is not as focused on the sharing of photos as are sites like Flickr and Photobucket. VoiceThread makes it easy to not only upload photos, but also audio and video recordings. Perhaps the most fascinating characteristic of VoiceThread is the ability post written and recorded comments on the materials users post. The possibilities of uses for this form of social media in the classroom are seemingly endless. Take, for example, how a music educator could employ such a tool in his or her classroom. A band director could administer a playing test of concert material by having students post audio or video of themselves playing musical excerpts. That director could then listen to each performance at school or at home and post his own recorded comments on how students could improve. Such an application of this technology makes waisting valuable rehearsal time to monitor students’ individual progress a thing of the past. History and English students can post reenactments. Foreign language students can act out scenes in the languages they are studying, and by making it a requirement for students to go on line, view other students’ works, and make constructive comments, teachers eliminate the need to use class time to share and review students’ works without subverting the importance of doing so. VoiceThread can also be used as an instructional tool in addition to a tool for assessment. Teachers can post recordings of lab experiments or the steps for solving certain mathematical problems and students can actually record and post any questions they may have-making VoiceThread a terrific two-way educational tool. The following link is an example of a VoiceThread project used as an educational tool. It actually focuses on how to use VoiceThread as an educational tool, so one can see just how powerful of a tool it is.
3. Blogs
Google Blogger defines a blog as “a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.” A blog is an online journal of sorts, where your posts are listed with the most recent one at the top. A blog can take on any shape or form that you want it too. Blogs allow readers to comment on posts therefor forming a social relationship between the reader and the author of the blog. Many educators use blogs to communicate between school and home, they can be used to summarize the lessons that were covered, or to let parents know of any upcoming events or exams. A blog can be a great tool to start a conversation between students and parents, as well as between parents and teachers. It invites parents into the classroom without them actually being there. In a day an age when you can watch your child at day care via the facility’s Facebook page, it is hard to believe that classrooms are still so closed off to the public. Blogs can also be used to spotlight student work and make it more accessible to family members that otherwise would never see what was taking place in the classroom. The Skinny is a fantastic example of the countless ways that a blog can be used in a classroom. Jim Alvaro is a 5th grade teacher in the Anchor Bay School District, and he is the host of The Skinny. As you can see there are You-Tube videos, student homework, a learn something new feature, weekly spelling words, a link to leave the class voicemail, published student writing, the list goes on and on. The blog keeps track of how many visitors it has, over 20,000 this year, and all of the countries that they are from. Jim’s students have used the page to form relationships with classrooms all over the world, and to share learning experiences with them as well.
