Social Media in Education

The BX POD held a few workshops this week on Social Media and how it could be used in Higher Education.

We of course went through the serial offenders

Blogger (ping!), Facebook, Wordpress, Youtube etc.

But for the purpose of this post I thought I would highlight some that may not usually get a run.

1. Sound Cloud http://soundcloud.com/
The best way to explain sound cloud is an Mp3 file that also acts as a community forum. The main use for Sound Cloud is obviously music, where it is uploaded and people discuss different aspects of the song. However, from an educational perspective, sound cloud would be terrific as a podcasting tool. Imagine the scenario where a Subject coordinator releases their lecture as a podcast using the soundcloud, then invites students to comment or ask questions. Or, where the subject coordinator releases a piece of audio and students are required to analyse it. Head to sound cloud and check it out.



2. Tumblr http://www.tumblr.com

Sharing and 'liking' aspects of the web is pretty vital for social media. A lot

of people who use social media like to

be defined by what they like. Tumblr infuses all this. Tumblr is a place to share anything

you can think of, photos, music, webpages, quotes, blogs, writings. etc. Your Tumblr can then

be followed by other people. From an educational standpoint - Tumblr would be terrific as a place

where the subject coordinator could 'houses' information they find on the web that relates to a particular subject or topic. Imagine, if you will logging on to a subject and finding that it has a Tumblr with literately 100s of pages of resources that you could use. Tumblr is also a terrific social bookmarking

tool.

3. Micro Blogging - Twitter

Micro-blogging was pretty much everywhere in 2010. The biggest obviously being Twitter.

Twitter is a site where you can relay anything as along it is a in 140 characters or less.

This could mean short updates from the subject coordinator on assessment information, or a new readings that are of interests. Subjects can also establish list of prominent scholars in the field who use the technology.

Cheers

James @ BX POD

www.twitter.com/jamesbrann