Social Media in the Classroom

From blogs.ubc.ca
Week 5: Social Media in the Classroom
 
Introduction page
 
jiorns says: October 3, 2013 at 2:28pm

Great work, Team 1. Loved your intros, and also that you highlighted social media for teaching & learning *and* for professional development. Ryan, your environment-by-pictures said lots for the value you get from social media. Looking forward to exploring more of your team’s project.
 
Conclusion – Analysis of Market for Professional Development
 
jiorns says: October 7, 2013 at 1:11 am

When reading this week’s content and comments on social media sites, and the comparisons of the usefulness of these sites for professional development, I was surprised that LinkedIn didn’t get more coverage.

LinkedIn.com has 225 million members and is “the world’s largest professional network” (http://www.linkedin.com).

Its services are connecting, learning and sharing, and growing careers. Any profession.

LinkedIn is the space to “talk business”. Not commerce necessarily, just your kind of business/work.

The groups (communities) feature on LinkedIn is the absolute best resource for connecting, and learning and sharing with others in the same professional field. I am in quite a few groups that are relevant to my work in instructional design and eLearning. Once I join up, there is a feed and I can choose how often to get the feed.

The content that is published within the community is diverse. Members create the kind of dialogue they seek within LinkedIn’s theme structure. Content can be anything from asking questions, sharing hot information, running surveys, promoting employment opportunities, promoting professional development events, seeking input for research, discussing changes in government policy or other relevant issues to the profession, and so on.

Each group/community is as international or as local as the group host, group name, and participants determine. I am in groups that are hosted from North America and in other groups that are hosted in Australia or New Zealand.

There are varying levels of participation that anyone can have when a member of LinkedIn, from free participation to premium (paid) services. There is a jobs board which I believe is a significant value add to a professional network. This service filters to your profession and location of interest and is also adaptive in format, retrieving opportunities from a database and letting you know what is available.

I understand that it has many other benefits from a marketing perspective, which I am yet to explore.

When we consider the task of market analysis of social media sites, there is an article that might be of interest. Forbes published an article on 5th October that compared Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (public companies). The writer contests that the value of a social media site is not “how many users?”, but “what is the worth of each user to the company?”, and “is that worth growing or declining?”. The article provides statistics on the ‘average valuation per user’, with LinkedIn at $135 per user, Facebook $108 per user. LinkedIn’s AVPU has grown since the company went public, while Facebook’s AVPU has declined since public launch.

See more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlouis/2013/10/05/is-twitter-the-new-linkedin-or-the-new-facebook/.
 
Comment about Twitter group for ETEC522SM
 
jiorns says: October 8, 2013 at 4:32 am

Your join up doesn’t seem to be working, at least not directly from this page. I posted a tweet and used your group hash tag, but not sure if it will be accepted into your log.

Here’s my tweet:

Janette Iorns ‏@wait_up
Plenty of topics and people to follow. I just found @spbt_tweets check them out #ETEC522SM

 
Comment about Twitter for Professional Development
 
jiorns says: October 8, 2013 at 4:38 am

Personally, I don’t like twitter and don’t actively use it for tweeting or following. However, it is linked to my WordPress site and posts that I make on WordPress do simultaneously get to the twitter sphere.
I prefer blogs by far and am more interested in the conversation format available within LinkedIn groups to nurture professional development than trying to make sense of erratic short bytes on twitter.
I can imagine that the ability to locate other people in a particular field and follow their tweets and other digital text is attractive to some people and would be a mode of engaging in professional development. Personally, I like to locate a group rather than an individual to get a wider range of opinions.
 
Comment about Pinterest
 
jiorns says: October 8, 2013 at 5:14 am

Prior to ETEC522, I thought of Pinterest as purely promotional media. Another channel to promote oneself, one’s creativity or one’s product. I had this thought without ever using it.
After the suggestion to sign up for an account, I have taken that step and viewed the Education category on Pinterest. I had the same thought as others have stated – the posts are very random, the site needs sub-categories, unless one has the time to do random browsing.
I still think that Pinterest works as promotional media.
A pin for Socrates 2.0 was very professionally developed as a narrated simulation video. Likely that vid was distributed across a lot of different social media.
In sum, I cannot think of anything Pinterest does that warrants me not sticking with LinkedIn or using Google.