Hi,
I found an article on using social media in higher education:
http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/tweeting-in-higher-education-best-practices
I graduated couple of years ago, when even nasza-klasa did not exist. Most "social" media in my education were email and ssh.
To be honest I found blog a strange way of English classes at first, but now I find it quite convenient. I use twitter for learning new technologies, programming frameworks, knowing about new publications or researches. I started couple of year ago when my colleague kept sending some interesting stuff found on Martin Fowler's twitter and I realized that serious IT guys also use it apart from teenagers.
But there are two, in my opinion big and important downsides of social media: first, everybody can tweet/post so you have to be careful who you follow; second, sometimes there is too much information to read all (despite I follow less than 10 accounts).
I wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter? Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?
Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
If the goal is to search and engage people, then social media, twitter in this case, is one of methods or channels to stimulate, challenge, encourage people to do something. But just because of using it, I don't believe someone will learn English or will be able to run any research. Unless it is social media related study:)
ReplyDeleteYes, I do follow bunch of people and institutions on twitter. Mostly economists, venture capitals or politics, as twitter is proven to be the most useful source of current affairs.
But no, I don't follow any researchers. At least at the moment.
In general, I do see obvious benefits of using twitter - source of fast and brief information. However, I do see an immediate drawback.. this kind of communication trims the message itself to the restricted number of characters, tabloidizing almost every post.
Then what many people observe, this kind of communication dangerously 'flattens' (or simplifies?) the relation between people. So spreading news quickly and briefly, but no so useful in creation of meaningful content.
Speaking about the content.. this is much wider topic when you look at the education system and the times we're living in surrounded by all these technologies. On one side an old-school(?) way of passing knowledge on the other knowledge verification using tests. Isn't this 'flattening'(decreasing) level of students' creative thinking?
And regarding English classes run over blog.. I admit I do find it a very convenient, but I'd still prefer a face to face real-time session rather than posting bunch of blog posts :)
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DeleteYes, I meant business/research purpose, not posting cats on facebook :) In my area couple of recognized scientist, like Hinton, LeCun or Ng have their twitter accounts, there are also accounts on well-knows deep learning frameworks like torch or tensorflow.
DeleteMost tweets link to an article or publication - you get a brief description and a shortened link, and I think that you can provide useful and meaningful content with social media.
I don't have Twitter account and I don't use it. I have only facebook account and I am using it mainly to follow some event and research sites. For example I am subscribing Physics Today which is great site about some new researches in physics field. Another great example is "I fucking love science" site which is lighter side of science it's very similar to Polish Focus magazine.
ReplyDeleteI am not addicted to twitter or facebook (I am visiting it twice a week) by I love RSS channels. I am not sure is this a social media stuff but I really like it and this stuff suites me very well so in 45 minute I can browse all my channels that I previously subscribed and sometimes even I am able to find some useful article not only in science field.
But isn't subscribing RSS a bit like following a channel on twitter? I realize that RSS news consist of articles but most post on twitter link to interesting content on the web.
DeleteIs there any RSS channel on your research area? Maybe some machine learning channel? I could give it a try.
I personally have very little using social media, I have only an account on facebook, which I use very little. Social media provide great potential for teachers, and they may use this to such transfer of educational materials, videos, links to interesting websites. Facebook for most teenagers is very important, I advance the thesis that some 80% of teens is just dependent and teachers should use this as a channel of information.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that teenagers want to have their teachers on their facebook friends list? :)
DeleteI have only Facebook account, and I use this for communicate with my friends, From time to time I send some information in my wall about traffic or results about match.
ReplyDeleteI follow researcher sites and read articles from this sites, but I prefer visit web site about technology to work or learning.
But woldn't it be easier to aggregate all news from pages you visit into one place, like twitter or rss reader, as Tomek suggested?
DeleteI think it be easier to aggregate all news from pages but I don' t use twitter or rss reader
DeleteI have not yet Twitter account and I don't think about this.
ReplyDeletefor me facebook account can give me more things than twitter .
As application of social network, Facebook allows its users to enter personal information and interact with other users. The information could be made available to the network concerning civil status, studies and interests. This information is used to find users with similar interests. These can form groups and invite others. Interactions between members include sharing correspondence and multimedia documents.
frankly speaking, Social media not a good Idea for education
Of course, facebook is more social than twitter, but on the other hand what has marital status to do with education? :)
DeleteI personally don't like facebook because there is a lot of rubbish there. All the pictures of your friends' children/cats/etc, pro-refugees posts followed by flood of hate, anti refugees post with more hate and so on.. Honestly, how many friends with the same scientific interests do you have on facebook?
I wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter? Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?
ReplyDeleteI do follow a lot of people from IT sector. I don't have time nor money to attend every conference or read every magazine I want and following certain people on twitter makes it a lot of simpler. I can read about new features, products etc. in condensed pills.
Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
I use twitter sometimes for work, rarely but still.
Sure, that's the only reason I have a twitter account. I follow Hinton, LeCun, Ng, DeepLearningHub, Torch and TensorFlow accounts. They post news from conferences, latest publications and most up to date research results.
DeleteI don't visit twitter daily, rather once or twice a week and pick some articles published.
I am also sort of admin of my client's company facebook profile so I can say I use it for work.
I wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter?
ReplyDeleteYes, I do. I follow key UX/Information Architecture people on twitter. Which I use rarely :)
Actually, I find it very hard to organize information on twitter or facebook; these sites keep on bombarding you with messages.
For me, RSS channels are more suitable tool.
Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
To some extent GitHub could be viewed as social media site :)
I guess the answer is yes, then.
Do you mean gitter? It's more like chat, but I think it's useful.
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ReplyDeletePersonally I prefer direct contact or in-depth study to social media. But the world changes quickly indeed and Twitter and similar tools have a future in spreading scientific information. On one hand often researchers use it to promote and disseminate their work to a wider audience quickly. On the other hand there are also potential problems we need to be aware of such as the lack of standards, the risk of idea being pinched and plagiarism. There is also a question of being “flooded” by other people’s ideas. Here again we need to find a golden mean like in everything.
ReplyDeleteI agree that personal contact is better, but it's hard to meet some research guru living in Canada for example. And if you only consume, there is no risk that someone will pinch your ideas.
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ReplyDeleteCurrently Twitter is one of my basic and fastest way to keep in touch with latest information and interesting people. I agree that it can be too much that is why I’m checking my list from time to time. If someone is not giving me as interesting information as I wanted that I just delete it. Same things happens with my pages list or email newsletters.
Of course we need to remember that this is only a sign that show us some path but we need to research most of the topics itself. But there are often interesting links that allow to understand the topic. Social media in this case is a very powerful and useful tool.
I think that before we start to follow tweets, or observe an account, it is worth analyzing the history of the account and decide whether it is worth will spend the time. We can find really interesting account through which we get smart selected information.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's obvious. Who do you follow on twitter? What's the mysterious interesting account?
DeleteAgree. I it is important to have function to discard any followed accounts if information served by selected account are not coincide with our way of thinking.
DeleteI would say that I'm a passive social media user, I consume the content but I do not create much.
ReplyDeleteI use Facebook to keep in touch with friends, Facebook Events is a nice to way to be notified and reminded about interesting events (concerts, tech talks, social events). I'm also part of a couple of tech groups on Facebook (like JS News, Python Poland) which I read occasionally to be up to date with latests trends and tooling.
I have a Twitter account, and I follow a lot of people from the tech world and also a couple of scientists. I feel that Twitter is the best place to find new technologies, trends and inspiration. There can be a lot of noise but it's really easy to just unfollow people. Thanks to hashtags Twitter is really useful on live events like conferences, concerts, sport events etc.
I'm also a consumer. Hopefully, one day I'll tweet a link to my publication :)
DeleteFor me twitter is also fastest way to know current state of art in my research area.
Just like Tom I didn't have a Twitter account. Until now, I used the news published on traditional web pages presenting the content, which I was interested in (also using RSS feeds). But probably soon I will try to use social media in my daily research. Why not?
ReplyDeleteBy the way in my opinion, this approach of teaching the language through a blog is an interesting idea. In particular, I think it can better support the process of working on PhD. In a short time you can read about a number of areas, which so far you could not consider. For those less experienced can freely formulate thoughts. And of course I agree that it's also convenient, so can give more time to work in research. In general, I think this kind of work and extra individual work with native speaker can give best results. However I can understand that it may depend on our language skills.
I have facebook account. Mainly I am using it to advertise some web projects. I do not have a lot of time to trace my friends or other people. I am doing my best to have in my circles only people who I know from real life. I am using google account (and G+) to have access to google services (mail, analytics etc.). Social media may be very helpful in startups. You can check some services on your friends, and receive quite fast feedback.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of learning can be good approach as lessons on blog - where you have to read a lot of articles from different areas, analyse opinions and write some comments. You can use twitter, or facebook to do the same.
On this subject I have got this same opinion as Iwo Kosowski-Banasiak. I also use Facebook account from time to time, and I use this only to communicate with my friends. If I wanted some information for may PhD work, I follow researcher to his/her site and read articles there.
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DeleteThat's ok if you have only couple of researchers to follow and they update their pages regularly. And if a researcher has an account in social portal he will surely link interesting stuff from his web page there.
DeleteTo be honest I just follow one newsletter called Android weekly, because it is close to my field. People who are responsible for putting it all together carefully select only the most relevant and intersting things and present it in a conveniend and consumable way.
ReplyDeleteAlso on youtube I follow couple channels from my field, and I got to say that it is more convenient, because I can just play it in a background and do other stuff while listening to some podcasts or reviews on some technology.
Twitter I don't personally use, because It is yet another site I would have to keep open in another tab. My problem is that there is too much information, so I spend more time unsubscribing from channels than subscribing to them. What a wonderful problem to have.
Thanks for the tip on youtube. I've watched some lectures from Stanford and some conferences, but it' hard to find a particular channel that covers my research area.
DeleteI wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter? Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?
ReplyDeleteI don't use twitter, I have a facebook profile which I sometimes use for staying in touch with distant friends or staying up to date with more social-private things, however the feed is full of spam and that makes it hard to filter out relevant information.
Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
I use Researchgate which is kind of a "facebook" for researchers but instead of your photos you upload your publications. ;)
I haven't tried Researchgate yet. I use Mendeley. It has desktop and mobile apps. I also look for publications on arXiv. Do you use Mandeley or arXiv? Have you heard of then before?
DeleteThis is obvious that I like social media. I have accounts on FB, Instagram, Snapchat and other. But I have never used these media to learn IT. I use these to have a good time with friends. Sometimes I use social media to learn English. For me this is the best way to learn modern English ever. People around the world use English to communicate with each other. And they create new words and new meanings of words. It is amazing for me. I find that social media are very useful to learn English. What about IT? I have mixed feelings about it. I am a fanatic of new technology but sometimes new technology is too modern for me I reckon in education we should use more static and trustful websites . Learning via social media is not good idea for me. Social media is a place for fun rather. I cannot trust the information uploaded on social media websites. Everybody can put some information on websites but this information can be wrong. I don’t believe all the news published on social media. Maybe in the future I will find twitter channel more which will help me follow some modern information.
ReplyDelete"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" :) That holds true, so you have to follow selected accounts, as Maciej wrote. But isn't there somebody who is "The Man" in your area, who you'd like to follow on social media? Would't you believe results he published?
DeleteThere are allways a method to confirm information or send a rescue signal. I think we can't depend only on virtual worlds.
DeleteI wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter? Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?
ReplyDeleteI do not have any twitter account. I also avoid using the social media if possible. I do have Facebook account with a lot of "friends". I setup it in order to communicate with my students (it was long time ago). Nowadays I use it only for communication purposes.
I almost forgot I use blogspot.com in order to improve my English :)))))
Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
At work I time to time use linkedin.com order to find proper subcontractors. I do use http://www.researchgate.net/ which in my opinion is mixed of linkedin.com and Facebook for researchers.
I've never had a Twitter account. Honestly I don't know how it really works. I used to have a Facebook profile and some former polish versions of social media portals. I decided to close most of them because of waste of time I was spending there. So answering the first part of your question - this blog is the only case I use something related to social media for educational purposes. When we talk about work, well situation is similar. I have a LinkedIn account which so far gave me nothing but extra email notifications and virtual connections. To look for some information useful in my work I visit in most cases specialized forums and sometimes some IT realted blogs (it depends on what Google shows me in search results)
ReplyDeleteWhat specialized forums do you use? Is anythyng else than stack exchange worth mentioning?
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ReplyDeleteI do not use twitter. However, I use facebook and I block the content from my friends - I am not really interested in what is happening in their lives.
I keep facebook account to follow my University's groups as well as programming groups. I have subscribed many other sites an, blogs which are concerning on social issues, too.
Unfortunately, there are few researchers on facebook to follow.
Talking about the other kinds of social media for educational purposes/work I use linkedin. I try to keep in touch with HR partners.
I wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter? Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?
ReplyDeleteDo you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
I don't have twitter account. I use facebook. I use it to stay in touch with my friends and also to follow the subjects that interests me, but I am not a very active user. Actually I cannot say much about profits of using social media, because I always was not a big fan of them.
The article you posted gave me a thought that maybe I should try to involve more in such activity, and at least make twitter account and try to follow few subjects or persons there :)
You can giveit a try. It's free :)
DeleteI came accross some interesting stuff because it was re-tweeted by researchers I follow. It would be hard to find it via search engines.
Hi, I use twitter to follow some key people in the fields that I'm interested in. One of my favorites are Joel Spolsky and Martin Fowler. I love the way social media are involved in modern educations. However, I mostly consume the content posted by someone else. I barely post anything myself.
ReplyDeleteI use Facebook more intensively as a general purpose social media platform. I use also LinkedIn for professional communication and ResearchGate for science-related content.
I think the two main points of the article is that social media connects students to the coursework in a better way, enhancing their understanding of the materials, and, secondly, that it promotes their engagement. I would say that this refers to a specific type of social media - such as dedicated e-learning platforms and blogs, or dedicated closed groups.
ReplyDeleteYour questions, on the other hand, refers to a more general idea behind the social media - it being a stream of real-time data, produced by both those who we consider experts as well as by a vast amount of random users. In such case either you have to use very specific sorting tools, other than just reading the posts, that enable you to extract the desired information or you end up reading all and not really using the social media nor your time efficiently.
Following tweets and posts of researchers or without a specific learning goal in my opinion is useful only for getting inspiration, but it is important to note that this happens in an unorganized, chaotic manner and hence I don't treat this as a serious source of learning information.
As I sad in my previous comments we can't depend only on virtual world but channel is in most cases blameless. However informations served with this protocols can be sometimes risky.
Delete1-2.I wonder if you follow any researchers on twitter?Or maybe an account on some technology/programming language/research topic/etc?NASA, DOD :), HOMELAND SECURITY :), ABW, FBI, CIA,some Astronautic accounts, IT Security accounts (Norse, Kaspersky etc.)
ReplyDelete3.Do you use other kinds of social media for educational purposes or work?
No
I never used Twitter in any cases and I deeply regret. I found interesting article about engagement and grades studied on Twitter account but now I can't remember where it was but maybe in future I shall return to this subject.
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