Social Media Tools for Social Learning is a book about educational uses of social media that specifically focuses on Twitter. The author offers a fresh, original and inspiring approach to the use of social media in education. She shows how teachers can use Twitter for novice and expert learning, for research to support teaching, co-teaching and collective planning, among other activities based on the teachers’ professional skills and strategies. A list of additional resources is featured at the end of each chapter.
Have you ever used Facebook to set up a study group, or possibly managed a Twitter chat? If not, then this book is for you! Inside Social Media Tools for Social Learning, you’ll find an introduction to YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, and WordPress. You’ll learn the advantages and disadvantages of social media tools and how they can be used in the classroom.
VoiceThread
VoiceThread lets people upload and share images, videos and documents and then have an online conversation about each other’s posts through audio, video or text comments. Alexandra Pickett, director of the Open SUNY Center for Online Teaching Excellence and an adjunct instructor at SUNY Albany, started using VoiceThread in 2006, primarily as an icebreaking activity in her online course. She introduces herself to her students through an informal video of herself at home with her daughter, so her students can get a full picture of who she is, professionally and personally. “One of the things that you want to do initially in an online course is to establish a sense of social presence among the participants in the course and with the students,” said Pickett. “And so I want to represent myself as a real person because that way they know that I’m real; I’m not a robot, I’m approachable, I am multidimensional.” She then invites her students to start a conversation about the importance of social presence in an online course.
Pickett likes the ability to have a conversation in multiple media. “It gives students a lot of options and flexibility in how to present themselves and in how to interact with a learning activity set up by the instructor or a presentation that they might be doing, so there are a lot of ways to use this tool instructionally,” she said.
Pickett said her students usually start out using VoiceThread’s text tool. To encourage them to branch out to audio and video, she models all of the different methods of interaction, and she makes it a “very low barrier in terms of expectations.” Some students are initially very formal and scripted in their posts and responses, so she also encourages them to relax and be more conversational. She models that conversational style in her own posts, but experience has taught her that she also needs to explicitly state her expectations for a casual, conversational tone.
According to Pickett, VoiceThread is easy to use and its functionality is intuitive. “It allows you to make the material that you’re talking about more engaging visually as well as in terms of interaction. It’s less passive than just reading text.”
Edmodo
Edmodo acts as a playground for teaching and learning with a place for posts, calendars, and general communication for teachers and students. Linking to students becomes simpler and more efficient as well as more effective when students enjoy the presentation of it. It makes it easy to share valuable apps with students.
Google+
Besides great graphics and themes, Google+ takes teachers to their students with circles that make managing virtual communication an art. Students might need to know more about a particular lesson because they didn’t quite get it the first time. Pull them into a circle of their own with just the right tools to connect them to their path to understanding and learning.
The great part about Facebook is that everyone is on it. Students love connecting with their friends and family with Facebook so telling them to check out the page where you post only makes sense. However, it’s very important to stay professional and have a separate personal account.
EdApp
Another cohesive social learning platform is EdApp. This award-winning tool is completely free and offers a full set of social functions, including discussions, video conferencing integration, forums, and gamification.
EdApp’s discussions and assignments feature is designed specifically to increase the amount of social interaction to ensure the success of adult learning. Discussions delivers instant coaching and mentoring opportunities to learners through a forum-like discussion between coworkers and managers alike. Similarly, the assignments feature allows employees to submit responses or tasks directly to managers for review. This can be anything from a reflection on the learned content and is a great way to analyze and provide a more in-depth understand of the content provided. Elements of video and images can also be incorporated, making it a highly dynamic way to engage with learners.
Taking this even further, EdApp has recently released a virtual classrooms feature. Like discussions and assignments, this element is designed to boost social interaction even further. The virtual classroom tool is a powerful built-in feature that allows you to reach and train your team members at scale without compromising the benefits of face-to-face interaction. It seamlessly links your video conference platform of choice like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams right into the EdApp platform. This feature is especially beneficial in the age of COVID-19, where the majority of work is now conducted remotely.
With EdApp, educators can enable all these social learning features alongside to drive better interaction and retention. These LMS features also allow team members to work together collaboratively, to share their ideas and challenge one another in a productive way. Collaboration in learning and training is key for enhancing the knowledge learned and is also a great way to promote connectivity between even the most dispersed teams.
Schoology
Schoology is a social LMS that works for both schools and businesses. For social features, it makes good use of video conferencing, live annotations, an interactive whiteboard, and the ability to record and share videos.
Schoology is also good for its cloud-based deployment and seamless integration with Google apps. One issue, though, is that while the school version is free, using the business version isn’t.
Conclusion
Social Media Tools for Learning brings together the resources you need to successfully engage learners in your online training program.