For Class Discussion:
We are all familiar with social networks, such as Facebook. It is big and here to stay, and who knows, the next big thing can be something other than Facebook. Compared to all those tools covered so far, applying a social or personal network for teaching and learning may be more informal and less structured (but most IDT professionals agree, designing learning environments or leveraging communities is becoming more important). For adopting social network for education or development, you should have clear purposes and plans (especially for how to co-evolve the space with and by users), and also, if considered at the organization level, strong leadership is a must. Think about two different organizations, one bans using Facebook during work/school, and the other encouraging Facebook for social learning. Regardless of your opinion or preference, our students and learners use these tools very actively, so you must know what they are and what benefits and pitfalls they have to guide proper use.
We are all familiar with social networks, such as Facebook. It is big and here to stay, and who knows, the next big thing can be something other than Facebook. Compared to all those tools covered so far, applying a social or personal network for teaching and learning may be more informal and less structured (but most IDT professionals agree, designing learning environments or leveraging communities is becoming more important). For adopting social network for education or development, you should have clear purposes and plans (especially for how to co-evolve the space with and by users), and also, if considered at the organization level, strong leadership is a must. Think about two different organizations, one bans using Facebook during work/school, and the other encouraging Facebook for social learning. Regardless of your opinion or preference, our students and learners use these tools very actively, so you must know what they are and what benefits and pitfalls they have to guide proper use.
- Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom an Alan November video (13 minutes) – The concept of a student, learner, and contributor
- Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Personal Learning Environments
- Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook
- Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II
- I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You by Clive Thompson, NYTimes
- Comparing Social Networking to Online Communities by Lee and Sachi Lever
- Spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective by Danah Boyd
Popular Tools – Course Google Site at https://sites.google.com/site/idt351spring2016v3/
- Facebook (can sign in with yahoo account)
- Wiggio
- Ning
- Google Plus
- Of course, if IDT majors, Adobe Communities
Further Resources – These are for those who want to explore further…
- Social Networks for Educators (looking for sharing as members of educational network(s) worldwide? This is it!)
- Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski (26 minute video)
- My Personal Learning Network in Action by Karl Fisch
- Questioning the Future of the Open Student by Vicki Davis
- Kiva.org – Microloans for less fortunate
- TakingItGlobal.org – connects you to social issues that affect us all
- Mashable – latest news and trends on social media
You can comment on any of the following:
- Which social or personal network did you focus for what purpose (e.g., personal development, informal learning, civic engagement, etc.)? What is your thought about social or personal network? If you are asked to design one, or facilitate/promote participation, how will you do it? Do you think a school or workplace must actively use tools introduced in this week? Why or why not? If you are the designer or teacher, what should you consider in adoption or implementation?
webtoolsforclassroomblog 
I decided to talk about Facebook; this is a great social media site that is used so much that it should be used for educational and work field purposes as well. I wanted to focus on personal development as well as informal learning. I am currently on many makeup websites that show off the do’s and dont’s of makeup. This teaches me, non-professionally, how to do makeup and I get to do so by learning from a wide variety, seventy-thousand makeup users, that differ in age, skill, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I decided for this purpose to make my own, I am using it to help people purchase a hard-to-buy product. The desired users is put into a Facebook Group and I can decide if its secret(only the users and I can see), closed(where people can see but you need permission to join) or open(people can come/leave as they please). I would promote by asking students/users to pass along or ask if people would want to join; I would leave the group open for anyone to take in/pass out information.
I would set rules to make sure no one is offended and the group isn’t taken advantage of.
I think if we used this in the classroom it can be used in a way that separates the social aspect of it and uses the product to bring users of Facebook into an academic group. I would consider asking my students if they do have a Facebook, if I have users that do not use Facebook I would ask and see if they would be willing to make one for the classroom. If I have a 100% approval/usage of Facebook in the classroom I would use a Facebook Group to bring the students together.
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The tool that I focus for the purpose of better and more effective content presentation is FaceBook for personal development. Facebook has many of people that they post their activities to help them get feedback from others around world. My thought about this tool is very great tool that allow us to communicate with our friends. FaceBook is very useful tool that prompts us to review the places we’ve been. If we check in at or tag a location, odds are Facebook will ask us to elaborate about our experience. For Instructional Technology effective use, I will use my plan by determining my primary objective and specialty for this tool. I will add some useful information about instructional technology on this tool to make people get background about IDT. I think most of people use our tools for this week especially FaceBook tool. They are very useful tools for school or workplace to communicate with each other. For me I still communicate with my previous work by using facebook. If am as designer or teacher, I will use these tools with my students to make them think how these tool are created. I will also develop these tool by add new technology on them such as try to make them more secure. Overall, all of them are great tool that help us to learn more with new technology.
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The tool that i focused on was facebook. I focused on facebook for personal development and professional use as well. as far as professional use i focused on facebook to land different jobs as i got older. i still use facebook for that specific reason today. it is a great way to stay connected to friends, family, and colleagues. I feel that social networking is one of the best inventions that man has made. this is simply because it is an easy way to stay connected with people and if you use it for professional use, it is a good way to stay connected to people around the world in your field of business. If i were asked to design or present a social tool i would first think about the features that are needed. what features users would like to have access to for example messaging, status updates, world news, video chat, audio calling, and search features are all very important in a social media tool. Then i would think about the design and how i could make it so the tool is easy to use for everyone. Yes schools and work places should use these tools. most of them are used everyday by schools and work places to further knowledge.
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I focus on Facebook for personal development. I think social network is something has both good and bad parts. The good part is that for example: you can easily connect with friends, seeing the world without even go out and etc. But the bad part can also be really harmful, like people posting bad things, lead new people in some fields into wrong way. As a social network, the most important thing I think is be friendly with the people who use it. Everything should be designed easy to use. The most important function should be able to posting things and add friends. Adobe community should be a good one that used in school and workplace since it’s a really professional community for people to talk about the Adobe software. Like Facebook is a social network that anything can post on it which means not that professional. If I’m a designer, I would like to have the main function works as Adobe community, got a lot of things there that helps people with a specific thing and people can talk about it, work on a specific part.
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I focused on Ning because it was something I had never heard of before and I wanted to see what it was like.
I feel that personal networks are the now and they won’t be going anywhere for a very, very long time. It’s a great way to stay connected to people and make new connections to new people.
If I had to design one, I would design it based around what the people wanted it to be about. With that done, I would have an easy interface and a menu with an automatically updating main page. What is on the main page will depend on what the customer wants.
Honestly, if teachers are using blogs or another site for their teaching purposes and find content with that, then they do not need this. However, if their teaching were spread out over multiple platforms, then having it all under one roof would be a must. This would help students find what information they needed and not having to go search every single site to find it.
If I was a designer, I would consider what the teacher was already using before I decided to implement this. If they were using a lot of different resources online already, I would recommend this. If they were not, I would start them out on something easier like a blog before going deeper into personal networks.
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I focused on Facebook and LinkedIn because the two are very similar but have two different end goals in mind. Facebook is a personal social networking site which I believe it should be kept for personal use only and not mixed with business. LinedIn is basically Facebook but for professional use. Both of these website are great for intreating with other people, only one is for personal use and communication whereas the other is for networking. I do not think that Facebook should be incorporated in school because of all of the ads and videos that are on the website and it is not used for professional or educational purposes. LinkedIn would be great in the classroom because it is literally a social “networking” website. The whole purpose of the website is to further your education and career.
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My topic of choice is Facebook. Facebook can be used for multiple things not just social. This site can be used for personal development as well as informal Learning. Facebook has the capability to add and share articles videos and websites. This can be used as a tool for informal learning. Each person who can see these articles can learn something and then can lead them to learn more about that topic if it is interesting. Users can also share a video with a specific person or everyone. Facebook is also beneficial in class because you can create pages for school events that can be public or private. It can also be used to send out a mass message to classmates and friends. It is important to understand that Facebook is not completely private and should be used with care as putting things on social media that may unprofessional can affect future en devours. Promoting something on Facebook is pretty easy because you can tag your friends or the company you are choosing to promote. You can also make your own event page and share the link with all your friends and since Facebook and Instagram are connected the hash tag you choose to use will also be available to millions if they click on that hashtag. I believe some tools that were introduced should be used by teachers and company’s but not all of them since some are more for socializing and less professional.
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