A big part of setting up an open, online course (e.g. MOOC), or gearing up for a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is the selection of meaning social media tools. In order to get an overview of the big families in social media, I started to make a list for my own comprehension and future selection. A added some examples to each group, but those are just the ones that immediately came to mind.
If you see that I have missed a group or set of social media tools, feel free to let me know.
Social Media Tool | Why use it + implementation | Example with possible extra |
Idea and content sharing Microblogging | Twitter allows the learner group to share short messages with one another, linking it to more content. Real life: educators have twitter meetings where they discuss a particular educational issue (#lrnchat) | Extra: using a hashtag (#) to keep on track of specific topics. Look here for all tweets regarding mLearning (updated life). |
Social Networking | Building a network of people that can add to the knowledge creation of the learner. Real life: people with mutual interest in management joining up in a group to discuss strategies (LinkedIn) | Extra: LinkedIn has a nice feature enabling you to send Q/A to your professional network. A nice way to meaningfully stay in touch. |
Social bookmarking | Social bookmarking allows the learner group to find bookmarked items related to the topic at hand gathered in one place. Real life: organizing online resources relevant to your learner group (e.g. augmented learning). | |
Multimedia sharing | Sharing visuals, audio and/or movies to give others an in-depth view on what is happening. Real life: health care workers sharing X-ray pictures and how they diagnosed it (Telemedicine). | Extra: make sure you choose a good copyright, you might want to look at Creative Commons licenses. Extra: geotagging, sharing the location of the object of the video, audio or picture that is shared. This metadata can later be used for additional learning tracks or research. |
Blogs | To reflect on what is learned, or what the learner thinks is of importance. Keeping a learning archive or personal learning environment (PLE). Real life: engineers keeping track of complex issues they encounter in the field and how they solve it. These accounts can later be used in similar situations. | A special mention must be made about Posterous. This great blogging tool enables you and any group member to e-mail content to a variety of social media tools: Flickr, Facebook, twitter… Try it out, it is fun AND easy!. |
Virtual meetings | Virtual meeting tools allow synchronous communication to take place. Great for collaborative discussions/brainstorming. Real life: sales protocols are provided asynchronously and learners need to go through them. Afterwards virtual meetings are set-up to roll play what is learned and discuss the protocols. | Big Blue Button (open source project) Wiziq(free for basic use) |
Sharing presentations | Sharing presentations offer an immediate way of enhancing knowledge on a certain subject. Real life: this can be used for assignments. Where learners are asked to build a presentation, share it and discuss each other’s work (constructively). | |
Collaborative reference managers | For those learners interested in research or formal accreditation, Real life: easily access citations, building reference lists, creating literature reviews. | |
Collaborative mindmapping | Planning or structuring thoughts, future steps, content. Real life: teachers coming together to set up a new curriculum, collaboratively building the course architecture. | |
Augmented reality additions | Great for adding authentic information to geo-located spaces. Real life: seeing archeological history unfold itself over centuries, simply by looking at your mobile device. |
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