Social Media for Higher Education

Slide 1: University & Web 2.0 How social media can help teachers & learners

Slide 2: What do you think when you hear “Web 2.0”? (Brainstorming)

Slide 3: What are your expectations today?

Slide 4: What to expect today 1. Brainstorming: What is Web 2.0? (15 min) 2. What is Web 2.0 / Social Media? Examples in higher education (30 min) 3. Why social media? Goals, risks and gains (15 min) [BREAK 15 min] 4. Practice Session (45 min) 5. Mash it up! (15 min) [BREAK 15 min] 6. Group discussion: Experiences? (30 min) 7. Brainstorming: Web 2.0 in your classroom? (30 min) 8. Questions & Answers (15 min) 9. Back to 1: What do you think of Web 2.0 now? (15 min)

Slide 5: What is Web 2.0 ? (Video: Tim O’Reilly) Three key characteristics: 5. the web as a platform 6. harness collective intelligence 7. user-generated content

Slide 6: What is Web 2.0 ? Also known as: • social media • social software • blogs • ‘This stuff for computer freaks’

Slide 7: What makes a service "social" ? • collaboration • community • sharing • openness

Slide 8: What’s in it for us? Some examples. A few examples to get us started: Wikis / Blogs / Flickr / YouTube / Facebook / Twitter Plus: Some use cases in higher education

Slide 9: Wikis + knowledge transfer easy collaborative - time-consuming

Slide 10: Wiki (facts, collaboration)

Slide 11: Wiki: Social Media Classroom By Howard Rheingold (UC Berkeley, Stanford University): “The Social Media Virtual Classroom will develop an online community for teachers and students to collaborate and contribute ideas for teaching and learning about the psychological, interpersonal, and social issues related to participatory media.“

Slide 12: Google Docs knowledge transfer + easy collaborative wiki-like, but strong privacy controls - walled garden (kind of) proprietary hosted in the cloud (data security?)

Slide 13: Google Docs (documents)

Slide 14: Blogs great archive + ‘link love’: Google loves it foster dialog great exposure comments! - comment might need moderation smaller groups of authors

Slide 15: Blog / Weblog (text/links)

Slide 16: Flickr (photos) + knowledge transfer easy collaborative easily shared photo library self-organizing (tagged) archive - time-consuming limited usefulness

Slide 17: Flickr (photos)

Slide 18: YouTube + simple video-based hosted (no bandwidth costs) - ‘sleazy neighbors’ video is time & labor-intensive copyright / intellectual property

Slide 19: YouTube (videos)

Slide 20: Facebook + privacy controls real people strong academic community (FB was founded for Ivy League students) - distraction walled garden

Slide 21: Facebook (real people)

Slide 22: Twitter powerful networking tool + very simple produces RSS feed ("hackable") great exposure privacy issues - requires a certain culture white noise

Slide 23: Twitter (really short messages)

Slide 24: Twitter in Education Use cases include: • communications tool for collaborating researchers • to get students to focus in a concise way on a topic • for conference attendees to discuss topics in a concise manner • strengthens a community feeling • tracking topics (by keyword) • instant, informal feedback • classroom ‚back channel‘ • immediate communication with students while not in classroom

Slide 25: Twitter (really short messages) Video: Twitter in plain English (http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter)

Slide 26: and: RSS (to make it all talk) RSS pushes information. To your users & students. Example: Podcasts

Slide 27: RSS: Podcasts

Slide 28: RSS (to make it all talk) RSS also pushes information from one service to another. And another. And another.  Mashups

Slide 29: Mashups Mix information from two or more sources and you get a mashup: Flexible, customizable, basis for an information ecosystem.

Slide 30: Mashups: Google Maps + X Example: Twittervision Google Maps + Twitter = Real Time Monitoring (enabled by RSS feeds)

Slide 31: Do we really need this? Judge for yourself. (I’d say: Yes!)

Slide 32: Goals, risks & gains What can we expect from Web 2.0?

Slide 33: Goals • transparency • dialog • community • media competency • collaboration • and…

Slide 34: Goals …to prepare your students for their future work environment (Benkler 2006 on peer production): “(…) radically decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals (…)”

Slide 35: Risks Perceived risks: • loss of authority • high expectations • “who wants to read all that stuff?”

Slide 36: Risks Realistic risks: • information overload • privacy! • losing the audience / creating a zombie • liabilities • costs: time-consuming!

Slide 37: Issues • social media are unordered & messy • tech problems, unstable software • adaption speed: how to keep up? • constant partial attention vs. back channel: ‘are you listening?’

Slide 38: Gains • constructive dialog • engaging! • transparency • word-of-mouth style promotion • direct feedback • more efficient online • collaboration & teamwork

Slide 39: Why should we do any of this? Common (but bad) reasons: • it’s hip & cool • ‘everybody else does it’ • someone tells you to

Slide 40: Why should we do any of this? Better reasons: • communicate more effectively & efficiently • foster knowledge transfer & learning • increase inter-disciplinary exchange • teach students how to work collaboratively • learn now for future developments

Slide 41: What is needed? • steady commitment • a culture of sharing and openness • involve the students (and trust them) • lose control (micro-management & social media don't mix)

Slide 42: Break (10 mins)

Slide 43: Tools (Practice Session) Groups: 3. Blog: Write posts & comment, link to relevant blogs http://uocsocialmedia.blogspot.com/ 4. Twitter.com: Find education Twitterers and follow them 5. Wikipedia: Fix Wikipedia UOC entry 6. Facebook: Start a UOC Social Media group 7. Flickr: Take pictures of participants, upload & tag them http://www.flickr.com/photos/uocsocial/

Slide 44: Now let’s mash it all up… …to see how RSS works in action.

Slide 45: Break (10 mins)

Slide 46: Experiences (please share your impressions!)

Slide 47: How could we use this to improve your classroom experience? New ideas?

Slide 48: Questions?

Slide 49: Die we meet your expectations today?

Slide 50: References • Social Media Classroom, Howard Rheingold: https://socialmediaclassroom.pbwiki.com • Twitter in Education: http://web20teach.blogspot.com/2007/08/twitter-tweets-for-higher- education.html • Twitter in the Classroom: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-professors-tips-for- using-twitter-in-the-classroom • Tim O'Reilly: Was ist Web 2.0? [Video]: http://blogpiloten.de/wie-sag-ichs-meinen-eltern/was-ist- web-20/ • Tim O'Reilly: What is Web 2.0?: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what- is-web-20.html

Slide 51: License Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

Slide 52: Thank you! Questions & feedback? My email: peter.bihr@gmail.com My blog: www.thewavingcat.com Resources: http://uocsocialmedia.pbwiki.com/