There are a multitude of social network sites available to the
adult learner, but many of them are not suitable for use in the classroom (at
least not in the "normal" sense or without a lot of altering). Some
of the most popular social networking sites available today are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, Google+, MySpace, Flickr, StumbleUpon,
Tumblr, Tagged, Vine, VK, Academia.edu,
etc. Out of this list, Academia.edu, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are the
most commonly used social networking sites for adult learners and
professionals. Twiducate is also a social networking site and was created for educators to use as a
controlled alternative to Facebook and Twitter.
Twiducate contains links
to Wikipedia, BBC, Discovery
Education, SchoolTube, Scribd, Prezi,
and many more. You can add teachers and students to your "group," as
well as inputting important dates, links, emails, and announcements. There is a
"Share your thoughts" area, where you can post things much like the
news feed on Facebook and other similar
social networking sites. Some other interesting features are class bookmarks
and the ability to keep track of others in the class network.
Most students
will be familiar with the way this site functions since it is like a cross
between Facebook and most college Blackboards. The one main difference is
that Twiducate does not allow students
to interact with or see posts by others not in their network. This helps to
keep the learner on task (we all know how distracting Facebook can be) and safe from harassment
or outside influences. The teacher, who acts like a group administrator, has
the option to forbid students from editing or deleting their own posts (good
for preventing "fly-by" posts, where a student posts something inappropriate
and then deletes or edits it before the teacher sees it). There are also
settings to allow the teacher to receive email notifications whenever a student
posts something and the chat feature can be also disabled (good for preventing
overly social activities during classroom sessions or quizzes/tests). Disabling
chat also prevents students from interacting with each other in a manner that
is outside of the teacher's sight and control.
As a professional alternative to Facebook, LinkedIn is one of the most used social
networking sites out there. This site is a lot like a digital CV (curriculum
vitae) that places users educational and career related information in the eye
of a controlled public. Subscribers input their data and experience in the
hopes that it will be seen by job/career recruiters (helping them find
employment) or they use it to connect with others in their same career field
(Lemann, 2015). LinkedIn is available
in more than 200 countries and territories, as well as over 24 languages
(Hempel, 2013). As an employment-related social networking site, LinkedIn is one of the most active ones available,
with almost 450 million users worldwide (Awan, 2015).
When used as a social network for educational purposes, LinkedIn supports the formation of
interest groups by its users (which can be private or "public").
While many of the groups are employment and career related, there are a
hundreds of thousands of groups available that cover academic and career
issues. Additionally, these groups have moderated discussion areas (albeit
basic and limited). Unfortunately, many of these group areas are found to
contain an excessive amount of spam, although efforts have been made to reduce
this problem. Groups use emails and notifications to help keep their members
informed of updates, discussions, and posts, as well as access to polls.
Educators can create groups for their students to use during
collaborative projects and learners can join groups that contain other users
who are working (or have worked) on similar projects. A couple of "outside
the box" LinkedIn uses for
educators are--as a means for teachers to keep their students informed about
events and situations, a way to search for funding or people for projects and
events, and connect or collaborate with other educators for support, ideas, and
research. Students can use LinkedIn to access college portals to find
scholarships, internships, and graduate positions; search for mentors and
tutors; join research groups; and collaborate with other students on group
projects.
With a little research a teacher can often find “sister” sites to
many of the most common social networks that are dedicated solely to education.
Twitter is one of the most used social
networks for this purpose, with numerous web pages available to teachers
explaining this use. Some of these web sites are:
For the “modern” educator there are a multitude of resources
available to them for use with their students and social networking sites are
an excellent example of how to merge student-familiar technology with education
to the benefit of all concerned.
References
Awan, Aatif. (2015, October 29). How LinkedIn’s 400
million
members are helping build the economic graph. LinkedIn
Official Blog.
Retrieved from
Hempel, Jessi (2013,
July 1). LinkedIn: How It's Changing
Business. Fortune, 69–74.
Lemann, Nicholas. (2015, October 12). The network man:
Reid
Hoffman’s big idea. The New Yorker.
Retrieved from
