Social Networking Tools Highlighted at Teaching with Technology Day: Knowledge Sharing and Creation

March 2007
Alicia Russell

Northeastern faculty are using social networking tools to engage students in learning and facilitate collaboration among their colleagues.

Joe Presbrey graduated from high school in 2003. Three years later, the MIT junior sold Sconex, the social networking site he designed for high school students, for $6 million to New York-based teen marketing firm Alloy. While Joe’s financial success sets him apart from most, his ability to create media makes him part of what Henry Jenkins, director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and last year’s Teaching with Technology Day keynote speaker, calls the “participatory generation."

Spanning from kindergarten through college age, members of the participatory generation are no strangers to the concept of anytime, anywhere learning. From grade school kids joining Webkinz and Penguin Club to high school and college students building personal websites, carrying multi-functional cell phones and MP3 players, and creating YouTube accounts, Facebook profiles, and gaming personas, these students are sharing and generating knowledge at an unprecedented rate.

Students create learning environments that interest them and invite others to collaborate with them. Yet, few of these students would equate anytime, anywhere learning with what goes on in the classroom. Professor Jenkins asserts that it is the job of teachers to take advantage of young people’s passion for learning by either tapping into the social networking tools they use, or at least understanding their attraction.

Social networking tools allow you to share, store, sort and search for websites (del.icio.us), people (Facebook), photos (Flickr), and videos (YouTube). Many commercial sites allow you some of this functionality as well. You can get recommendations for, write reviews of and purchase books and other products (Amazon.com), music (iTunes), and movies (IMDB.com).

Educational uses for social networking tools are on the rise, and a number of Northeastern faculty members are making use of them to teach their students.

Check out these examples and ideas for using social networking tools in your courses and come hear professors Edward Wertheim, Walter Carl, and Dan Scheirer describe how these tools have enriched their teaching and students’ learning.

del.icio.us (del.icio.us)
A social bookmarking tool for sharing, storing and exploring links to websites. This tool allows users to store links on the Internet rather than on a personal computer, thus making them available on any computer. 

Facebook (facebook.com)
An online directory that connects people through social networks at schools and colleges.

Professor Dan Scheirer uses Facebook to connect to students in his class. Listen to a webcast about his experience on “Connecting Your Classroom with Facebook" in the EdTech Center's SmartBar.

Flickr (flickr.com)
A photo management and sharing application that allows you to store, search, sort and share photos. A committee at Northeastern that is investigating learning spaces uses it to share photos of locations at other institutions they have visited. Groups can also use it to share photos of activities.

Wiki (wikipedia.org)
A Web site or other online resource in which users contribute and edit content. The most well-known example is Wikipedia.

Northeastern professor David Kellogg uses a wiki to allow English instructors to share ideas and resources.

Others include:

• Romantic Audience Project: This site provides extensive resources on Romantic Literature developed by faculty and students at Bowdoin College
• Wikiversity: A Wiki designed for the creation and free use of learning materials and activities.

Blog
A blog, or Web log, is an online journal or reverse chronological publication, which is generally maintained by one author and available to the public via the Web.

Walter Carl has used blogs in his Advanced Organizational Communication class as well as his special topics class on Word of Mouth, Buzz, and Viral Marketing Communication. Because blogs are more public than a discussion board in Blackboard, for example, he finds that students take more care, and greater pride, in their contributions to the blog. He notes that students find it especially gratifying when someone from outside the class, and perhaps half-way around the world, comments on their posts, thus creating a dialogue that was never possible before.

Northeastern Professor Mark Bridger created a blog to explain the math used in each episode of the CBS hit series Numb3rs. At a recent EdTech talk, he discussed how he hopes the blog will encourage more students to study math. (“Can Blogs and the Popular Media Help Educators Working with Numb3rs")

Inspired by Henry Jenkins’s talk on social computing, Edward Wertheim asked his students to keep blogs, replacing cumbersome paper journals. “With the blog, I can check them periodically at my leisure, give feedback, and then at the end of the semester, I just ask for a final summary; the separate entries are all right there so this is much easier for the students and for me."

Also see information on the EdTech site on how to create a blog.

Vlog
A vlog is a or videoblog that combines video, web and a log. As with a blog, entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order.

See Sue LeBeau’s website for an index of educational uses of blogs, vlogs, wikis, and podcasts.