Introducing Social Media for Education

Ian Kennedywww.friendlycreatives.co.uk

About your tutor A decade working as a creative professional – BBC scriptwriter, producer of radio, audio, film, series and promotional videos.

Web designer – creating user-friendly bespoke sites forbusinesses and organisations that would like to manage their sites themselves in future at no further expense – including new social media sites.

Part-time manager of social media, website and newsletter for the Producers' Forum, an organisation by and for anyone working with film and video.

Soon to launch own web video series through social media.

What are social media? - Discuss.

SOCIAL – mammal brain. Bonds to others and empathy towards strangers. Collective activity and progress.

MEDIA – means of sharing information or content across distances and time.

At heart, social media are about making your individualuse of media into a sociable or collective activity. Amassive part of this is, of course, sharing.

What could you share? - Discuss.

Your life! - textual information (diary, updates...), photos, videos, relationships(!)...

Your interests – music, websites, information... Your work – resources, materials, research, links...

Why share? What are the benefits and risks? - Discuss.

Personal benefits of sharing for users. Professional and marketing benefits of sharing – and why, in the

age of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, why your 'social capital' is a tangible and lucrative business asset.

Risks of sharing – privacy, offensive or aggressive 'trolls', drivel, junk and spam. Social media as a potential 'black hole' for your time and productivity.

For professional or educational use, be focused - it's important tohave a clear strategy about why you're bothering to use social mediaat all, not just getting on social media because you feel it's expected of you.

VERY brief introduction to different major social media platforms (part 1)

Blogs – online diary type sharing, predominantly textual. Was a precursor to social media, but remains relevant, particularly within specialist subject areas, news and politics.

Facebook – for sharing your life and news with your “friends” (or, more likely, your extended network of casual acquaintances, relatives,

colleagues...). - www.facebook.com >The difference between individual profiles, Pages, Groups and games. >'Like This!' >Change your Settings to optimise your experience and reduce the

drivel!

Case Study 1 – The Producers' Forum(www.producersforum.org.uk)

Organisation by and for independent film and video producers – providing training, networking and resources. So clearly anorganisation with both an educational and a social side.

Little-used previous website was built shortly before social media took off, and never really caught up, though it had individual profiles and sharing of documents and videos for members.

Diversification onto new platforms, but without a Communications Strategy to coordinate efforts – some incoherence.

New website – a social media platform. Gradually expanding into new features, eg video galleries, what members can do for you. Restricted content.

VERY brief introduction to different major social media platforms (part 2)

Twitter – microblogging service. Share mini-updates, links, messages etc with the world instantly – but things said in haste or in context may haunt you forever. Relentless activity creates a dream service for ourincreasingly ADHD news and entertainments media... so take with a hefty dose of salt. - www.twitter.com

YouTube – for sharing videos of any type (but only up to 15 minutes). Now equally for professional promoters as well as lay users. A huge and growing influence upon the web, especially through integration with Google. - www.youtube.com

LinkedIn – for organising your professional networks. - www.linkedin.com Also: Flickr for sharing pictures, Google+ trying to rival Facebook, Tumblr

for sharing the media you consume or create, social bookmarking through Delicious and others, etc.

The “1-9-90” rule.

Social Media for Education – Discuss.

Useful infographics about social media in higher education: http://mashable.com/2012/02/03/higher-education-social-media/

100+ examples of social media you can use in education, including blogging, collaborative calendars, podcasting, RSS, and lots more: http://c4lpt.co.uk/social-learning-handbook/100-examples-of-use-of-social-media-for-learning/

More info in this video: http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/04/24-education-collaboration

Useful video and guide from the University of Leeds at http://escelearn.wordpress.com/

Case Study 2: The Khan Academy

Accidentally turning the teaching and learning of mathematics and other areas on its head through web video. Inspirational for educators andthe shape of things to come. And it's free. http://www.khanacademy.org/

TED Talk, “Let's use video to transform education”, including a standing ovation and a chance to see Bill Gates wowed and inspired, at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

In groups, explore and discuss then present to the class about one of the following aspects of the Khan Academy: (1) how it started and got going – see first half of TED talk (2) How the Academy has grown, and transformed maths teaching and learning – see second half of TED talk (3) what videos are on the site now, and how people or educators can use them (4) other features of the site.

Build your own social network?

Potentially greater control over members, access, utilities and restrictions.

Ning - http://uk.ning.com – free trial; from £2.95 per month for smallgroups. Excellent customisability and even profitability.

Bloomfire - http://bit.ly/N4w2Uv - Impressive customisability to share or block what you choose in a bespoke format. Free trial, but $99 per month afterwards.

WebCT – demonstrates the potential pros and cons of not simply using free major platforms for educational social media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebCT

WordPress – brilliantly customisable platform for building your own blog, social network, e-commerce site, etc etc – all for free. My websites at www.friendlywebstarter.co.uk.

ACTIVITY – in small groups

Think of different educational projects you've been asked to undertake overthe next year, or could be.

Choose one that you think might particularly benefit from use of social media.

Prepare an initial proposal to put to your manager, detailing how you would like to put social media at the heart of your project. Make reference to what further research you will need to do, how much time should be allocated to initialise and consequently manage the project through social media.

Aim for a project in which the social media element will significantly outgrow your initial expectations – where user interactions will help to shape the project into the form that is of most benefit to themselves, rather than the tightly structured and constrained usage that you might instinctively favour! Think what you will and won't enable or allow users to do on the system.

Present your proposal to the class.

A second Thought. What is an introvert? - Discuss, and discuss why I'm raised this issue here.

From Gifted Kids (http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/introvert.htm):

Introversion is NOT shyness...

Introverts are more concerned with the inner world of the mind. They enjoy thinking, exploring theirthoughts and feelings. They often avoid social situations because being around people drains their energy. This is true even if they have good social skills. After being with people for any length of time, such as at a party, they need time alone to "recharge."

Being introspective, though, does not mean that an introvert never has conversations. However, those conversations are generally about ideas and concepts, not about what they consider the trivialmatters of social small talk.

Introverts make up about 60% of the gifted population but only about 25-40% of the general population.

Naturally introverted people may have a highly ambivalent attitude to social media – and the more that social media become the normal means of communication and work, the greater the danger that introverts will become alienated. This is particularly relevant to educators considering the use ofsocial media in their courses: it's a useful way to organise activity, but may shut some people out.

That said, traditional educational practices may favour introverts (“Children should be seen and notheard!”) so the use of social media may in fact be a rebalancing in favour of the 60-75%, by relating learning activities to the things that matter more to them!

Further areas of interest

The world has still barely scratched the surface of what socialand collective media could do to transform education, employment, social problems, politics etc etc – the real revolution may still be ahead. The use of shared personal videos online and flashmobbing has been significant in the Arab Spring but also in the August riots last year.

More services, resources, productions and writing from me: www.friendlycreatives.co.uk, www.friendlywebstarter.co.uk, www.iqkennedy.co.uk, www.producersforum.org.uk