Other+media

Use of other social media in education
Share your experiences of social networking or other media used for publishing student work as part of your education - either as a student or as an educator.
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 * UCD use a system called Blackboard which allowed Student publishing and participation in a lot of ways...unfortunately it wasn't used by many lecturers, but the Philosophy department were quite good at using it to good effect. One of the tools was a message board where they would get students to post up things such as their thoughts on a something likfe a basic philosophical theory and other students would then discuss its merits, and debate the subject etc. I found this to be a pretty good way of getting students involved in a subject, and I certainly became more interested and active in the topics discussed as a direct result.

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 * Outside of education, I use a lot of forms of social networking sites to share the music I make. Myspace, facebook, blogging on sites such as tumblr, as well as threads on discussion forums are all really useful ways of engaging people in what you're doing, and to encourage feedback. The ability to get immediate reaction and comments on my work is really encouraging, even if it's negative (but constructive!) and I certainly think that this would have the same result in the field of education. Working for weeks on an assignment, handing it to your tutor and getting a grade isn't as satisfying as getting the reaction of your peers to something you have worked on and finding that it actually has some kind of relevance outside of passing a course!
 * I have found that students can have a negative perception of Blackboard - due to it's unreliable nature at times, and it's unattractive interface - and so it can be better to hold discussions off the site and in a more user friendly setting. However the benefit of use BB is that it is within the college structure - and therefor easy to track, and students are less likely to go off topic and into personal discussions.

> > Where it is less effective is as a tool to support learning within the studio environment. It does little in an ‘active’ manner to complement the real time experience / activities that take place as part of the experiential learning experience in the art and design studio. > > When working with computers and software, art and design students respond well when the tools and environment are intuitive, fluid and visually engaging - all the things which Blackboard does not provide in its current form. It is visually unappealing, clunky, linear and staid. It does little to support the ‘visual artefact’ (in still of motion format), which it needs to change if it is going to engage, stimulate and foster interacting from art and design students.
 * I work with design students on a level 8 degree programme. Where I think Blackboard is effective is as a document store for project documentation (briefs, schedules, workshop notes etc.) needed for programme delivery. Students can access documents on campus or via a remote location, so access to this material is available on a 24 hour basis, seven days a week.


 * When I present new ideas to an audience that can be quite conceptual in nature I like to use video, when possible. Typically a quick search on YouTube returns some useful and stimulating videos for a wide variety of psychological topics, e.g. perceptual illusions, neuronal activity, and social phenomenon.

To share any useful information, research, links or data you have about these tools in education.

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 * I found this interesting statistic from a 2007 report, Here is the URL for the report also " Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Almost 60 percent of students who use social networking talk about education topics online and, surprisingly, more than 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork." - []
 * [|Good paper reviewing blackboard as a learning tool]
 * [|Is Twitter an effective online collaborative environment?] Interesting article on how the author finds Twitter the most useful collaborative tool.
 * [|Twitter for teachers - why you should start tweeting!]
 * **[|America’s Digital Schools (ADS)] **

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 * **[|McCrea, B. (2009). Peercasting: Students Produce Math Support at NC Middle School.] **

**Great twitter feed from Will Richardson on Education**
rss url="https://twitter.com/willrich45" link="true" number="3"

Interesting twitter feed form Al Doyle - NYC Game design teacher, professor & artist.
rss url="http://twitter.com/aldoyle" link="true" number="3"