Life @ Otis : Faculty Life

Social Networking/Bookmarking


  

 

Social Bookmarking can be extremely useful in courses where research, exploration of new topics, and sharing of information is required. The two most popular sites are Delicious and Diigo. 

Social Bookmarking is a community—or social—approach to identifying and organizing information on the Web. Social bookmarking involves saving bookmarks one would normally make in a Web browser to a public Web site and "tagging" them with keywords. 

Groups or classes can set up their own account and allow everyone to easily add their links to the account and write annotations about why each site is important or interesting. That way, all links can be found in one place.

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking

Examples:
Sue Maberry's Delicious links for interesting webtools.

You can also create stacks, which are playlists of curated content for students.

 

Social Networking
Ning is the world’s largest platform for creating social websites. Top organizers, marketers, influencers, and activists use Ning to create an online destination that weaves social conversations in content and inspire action. Ning makes it easy for brands of all shapes and sizes to build custom and powerful social websites. 

Facebook - We all know that our students are on a variety of social media sites. They use Facebook, Skype, iChat, various blog sites, etc. on a regular basis. If we can use one of these to enhance learning, why not?  You must decide whether or not one of these sites is appropriate for the topic and content of the course.

Facebook is a very simple social media site to use for a class. In fact there is actually a page for educators using Facebook to discuss their experiences.

The first thing to do is to create a Facebook page that is totally separate from your personal page and make the class page a closed page.  Then, lay down some ground rules.  For example:  don't use profanity, don't post anything you don't want shared with the whole class, and the world, do use the site frequently to discuss class business or ideas related to the class, do post images and information that you think are relevant to the class and will engage other students.  

This space is a good one for students to get to know one another and become more comfortable. It is also good for students working together virtually on projects.  They find this to be a quick and easy way to talk to each other, whereas the blogs and threaded discussions are seen as something filtered through the course or the professor. So, it can be a casual and easy discussion place that enhances communication particularly for team papers/projects.