Group items tagged

"The wait is almost over. A weeklong exercise in withdrawal from social media usage will end for the campus community at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology shortly. The Pennsylvania university, which performed a similar move last year, has been blocking network access to 10 popular sites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Twitxr, and Plurk, as well as texting outlets. This year's activity has been dubbed, "Back to Blackout." The intent of the blackout is to inspire thinking about how, when, and where people use and abuse social media, according to Eric Darr, executive vice president and provost. "We believe that technology is not inherently good or bad. Rather, technology becomes useful or destructive in the hands of users. This exercise is an attempt to better understand an important technology, social media, that clearly impacts how we live and work. It might inspire students, faculty, and staff to think more about their social media habits and to further raise awareness about the impact that social media has on daily life and work.""

"Altimeter's research examined companies considered to be advanced in social business and their preparations for or ability to avoid a social media crisis. Given the accelerated us of social media on campus within core services, meaning higher education's adoption of a social media business model, the possibility of a social media crisis arising is something that should be expected and planned for."

"Define Your Boundaries How you choose to set boundaries on the kinds of communication you have with colleagues and students will ultimately be a personal decision, albeit shaped by campus policy (on office hours or the use of email) and departmental culture (some departments expect your attendance at frequent social events, and others don't). Because the language of social media (following and friending) tends to blur boundaries, it's very important that teachers communicate carefully with students about their own practices (I and many other faculty simply have a rule of not friending students on Facebook, for example) and especially when social media are included in course requirements. Jason and Alex's discussion of the creepy treehouse problem offers some good suggestions on making your reasons for using social media for the course transparent. "

Here is this week's roundup of 5 resources about social learning and the use of social media for learning.  Again lots of great articles to choose from this week.

"Colleges themselves are also finding a need to craft multiple identities online, setting up a different Facebook page and Twitter account for every department or research lab. The University of Virginia's library has 14 Facebook accounts. (One focuses on the science-and-engineering library, another on the fine-arts library, and so on.) Many colleges now count dozens of official Twitter accounts, plus a tangle of pages on Facebook, channels on YouTube, and photo collections on sites like Flickr. In the past year, more colleges have tried to get a handle on their many online identities, crafting social-networking policies and creating a new job position-social-media strategist-to try to bring some sort of order to the chatter."

An easy way to create a widget for any social media you use

"At a recent retreat to mark the tenth anniversary of the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project, which produces an annual report on technology trends affecting higher education, participants identified 28 important metatrends. The 10 most significant are: the world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative; people expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to; the Internet is becoming a global mobile network -- and already is at its edges; the technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media; openness is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world; legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society; real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success; the Internet is consta ntly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy; there is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training; and business models across the education ecosystem are changing"

"Social networking tools aren't going away any time soon, they appear to be here for the long term. But do these kinds of applications really belong in the classroom? I think they do, and here's a few reasons why:"

"Most Significant Metatrends for the Next 10 Years 1. The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative. 2. People expect to work, learn, socialize, and play whenever and wherever they want to. 3. The internet is becoming a global mobile network--and already is at its edges. 4. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and rich media. 5. Openness--concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information--is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world. 6. Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society. 7. Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success. 8. The internet is constantly challenging us to rethink learning and education, while refining our notion of literacy. 9. There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. 10. Business models across the education ecosystem are changing. Excerpts of the 10 top metatrends identified in A Communiqué from the Horizon Project Retreat, January 2012, an NMC Horizon Project publication under Creative Commons attribution license. "

Discussion about networks and social media in PD

"The Utah Education Network is a case in point. It left Blackboard, the market leader, for Instructure, a year old Utah-based developer with an open source product called Canvas. Consider the way messages are sent and received on Instructure's Canvas: The receiver has a choice between traditional university E-mail, gmail, Facebook and text messaging; Blackboard's system uses traditional E-mail and was designed before Facebook was created. For a student body that uses social media the way earlier generations used pencil and paper, the differences between the two competitors are profound."

"A study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project confirms the idea that young adults-particularly undergraduate and graduate students-are more likely to use the Internet and own tech devices than is the rest of the general population. But nonstudents ages 18 to 24 were more active on social networks than were college students, sending more updates to Facebook and Twitter."

Look what BC has for their students. A live chat for students to ask questions about research, citations, libraries, etc. It doesn't matter what school you go to. Cool!

"As many of my colleagues know, I have not been a big fan of Twitter for academic purposes. Why? The impression I had is: * Twitter is tacky. Great if you want to know what Paris Hilton's dog is up to, otherwise: aahhh, no. * Twitter is unfiltered. Too much chaff, no wheat! * Twitter is too open. Students will be encouraged to let loose, to mix topics, to lose the thread that an instructor can maintain in a more tightly controlled discussion forum In the interest of an open mind, lately I have been exploring Twitter a bit, and while I still basically believe the points above, I have found some uses for Twitter that might be helpful."