Social Networking for Higher Education
Things I have learnt from Social Networking class:
Google Apps for Education, is one of the best effective solutions for all messages, collaboration, interactive learning and online classroom done by the giant Google.
Like "Google Apps for Work or Business" Education edition of Google Apps is equipped with all necessary tools for communication, collaboration, documentation, storage, sharing, learning and high security.
Google Apps for Education (GAE) is bundle of 7 core and 60+ other apps which includes Gmail, Calendar, Contacts, Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawing), Sites, Groups, Hangout with 99.9% uptime SLA guaranteed on core applications.
10 benefits of going Google Apps for any education institute.
1) Test/Exam - Teachers in GAE can use Google Form and create a test with multiple choice, questions based and they can be shared easily with the selected class or they can also do it separately another thing they can manage to do is that they can publish the exam on Google sites easily.
2) TimeTable/ Events- Teachers in GAE can use the Google Calendar, adding all the classes or upcoming events and then they can share it with the whole class or they can also share it privately and the class can subscribe for it.
3) Discussion - Google Groups can be used to create a group mail id with all students as its members. Collaborative inbox within Google groups works wonder to track all previous and recent discussions in that forum.
4) Documentation - Google Docs is an interactive documentation app with lots of new innovative features such as research, add-on, embed gadgets and more. User can create their own documents, store it online in drive and share with others with multiple choice of access such as view only, comment and edit, they can also share it online.
5) Reports/Presentation - Google Sheet and Slides is another amazing app and one of the most used app today. Sheets can be used for more calculation oriented information and slides for presentations & animations. Like Docs, these also have sharing options and access control.
6) Tutorials/Webinar - Google Hangout can be used by end-users or teachers for taking online classes, recording and saving them in class-specific youtube channel. Tutorials/Webinar are best way for student to learn and interact. With Hangouts, one can do 1-to-1 or 1-to-many text/audio/video chat sessions. Hangouts on air is 1-to-many video broadcasting which is automatically saved in associated Youtube channel to make it more helpful if you needed to go back and review the video at any other time after the Tutorials/Webinar.
7) Feedback - Google Forms can be created to take feedback or survey from parents or students as per the requirement. Google forms lets you create a questionnaire using text based or multiple choice questions and then it can be shared with others. All the answers or feedback is automatically captured saved in automatically associated sheet or can be emailed on certain triggers.
8) Control - The Mastermind, Google Apps admin can control entire applications, access and sharing settings for their institute. This give powerful control in the hands of admin to manage and monitor the use of the application and admin can be more than one selected person.
9) Collaboration - Multiple users can do real time document editing at the same time and can even start instant chat within document with shared colleagues. This kind of innovative team/class collaboration makes it very powerful application.
10) Communication - End users can now communicate with colleagues and others via email or text/audio/video chat. Multiple Party web conference via Google Hangout.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of using Facebook by Students
The social networking is being a huge impact in our daily life these days, the majority of the population are all getting hooked by the social network ancor. The Boss, in the virtual world nowadays is Facebook. Facebook users are very effective and powerful these days and they are always online updating their status and sharing their lives with others, nearly 1.79 billion of the worlds population is on Facebook and got their account already. Facebook users are just looking into a screen and not releasing what its causing us, their are both the advantages and disadvantages specially for students in this argument.
The good cause of Facebook:
It will provide a lot of knowledge for the students because it will get them connected with a lot of different people from different places around the world, but this it will be improving their launague and their communicating skills, also it will help students to learn more about different regions and their cultures and know about different places because they can be chatting with a foreigner or a friend in a different location as them. Also students can create groups for discussions ad they can share their classwork and notes in the specific chat or group/page.
While on the other side, Facebook do have disadvantages too and they are serious disadvantages too.
such as that the students they don't usually tend to focus on their work and it eats a lot of their time while they are just checking their posts or even updating them. Other disadvantages such as students will be doing their assignments online but then Facebook drives their attention away if they get a message or so from friends, basically it will be study distractions. Some students will get turned away when they meet the wrong friends that will try to divert them into drugs and other illegal stuff that he only found through Facebook. One of the other disadvantages is paying the bills for the internet so as to get the access of Facebook and this will be a high cost for a budget student.
In conclusion those are some advantages and disadvantages by using Facebook account. It is okay that people think that Facebook is a fantastic social networking tool. The reality today, it is difficult stop people to visiting Facebook especially students. I think students should not use this account too often. Education is the most important thing, if the students use Facebook too much it can be disturb their concentration in study. It will be better if students more responsible not waste nor abuse their time.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Twitter for Students
Advantages of Twitter for Students
Further Student Engagement in 'Outside' Class Discussion - a potential benefit of Twitter for students has been pointed out by several academic studies which indicate that students who use the Twitter platform to engage in discussions surrounding topics set by a teacher are likely to improvement on their grade, for example one study found "a 0.5 point increase in their overall GPA" . Hence, there is obviously a positive aspect of Twitter for students in terms of their grades -- where if educators provide the surroundings for discussion on Twitter -- then this therefore provides an opportunity for discussion outside the classroom which can potentially improve student engagement as well as the results of students.
Teaches Students to Keep their Arguments Concise and to the Point - another positive that may well go hand in hand with the point made above, is the fact as Twitter is 'simple' in the fact that you are only limited to using a 140 characters -- it teaches students to make points concisely and 'to the point' rather than with other social networking sites such as Facebook where you can ramble and ramble. A student on Twitter is instead forced to get straight to the point using and presenting words that are 'useful and relevant' whilst presented in a concise manner -- which is an good effective skill to have developed for the work place.
Keeping up to Date with all the Latest News and Trends - through Twitter students can benefit from having 'up to date' information easily accessible for them -- through Tweets that have links to news and informational articles that interest them. For example, if an Economics student wanted to follow 'The Economist', then this means usually every time 'The Economist' publishes a new article -- the student sees in their 'News Feed' the Tweet from the Economist with a link and a brief description surrounding the article -- from this the student can therefore learn, read and expand upon their current knowledge that can potentially further benefit their education, that otherwise they may have not known about.
Disadvantages of Twitter for Students
A Further Opportunity to Procrastinate from Revision (Time Consumption) - although Twitter can be used to benefit a student's education (as mentioned above) -- it also has the opportunity to do the complete opposite effect and distract (& sabotage) a student from engaging in study and revision. A student's grade can seriously suffer if instead of revising and studying, all they are doing instead is tweeting and following other Twitter user's Tweets -- this coupled with the fact Twitter has thought to be even more 'Addictive' and 'harder to resist' than cigarettes doesn't help either.
Making Yourself Vulnerable - as with most social networking sites, if you are not cautious of what information you are uploading and sharing on to Twitter -- you may become a potential victim to an internet predator. For example, as with Twitter you are able to create 'anonymous' accounts -- you don't always exactly know who it is that is actually following you -- and if for example a student happened to Tweet they were going on holiday to X-Land on Yth of July, this could give the signal to a potential robber that the house will be all clear for a potential robbery etc. Furthermore, for example what if your are unaware that your 'boss' is following you and you happened to Tweet something they deemed inappropriate, you may have found you just missed out on a new job opportunity. It is important to actually 'think' before you Tweet.
Psychological and Social Issues - there have also been many academic studies conducted surrounding social networking sites and its effects (e.g. 'The Twitter Effect') and impacts on the social and psychology of a person including students -- unfortunately these seem to be rather on the negative and 'depressive side'. For example a recent study by the University of Vermont found 'Twitter' is making us "more unhappy" as well as "less human" explained by Professor Turkle in her book 'Alone Together'.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Youtube for Students
Advantages of YouTube for Student
As time is progressing, teachers need to keep up with the 21st century classroom and that means allowing students to use sites such as Youtube in the classroom. YouTube has many benefits to help students learn providing students are taught about digital citizenship and teachers have developed a trust that their students will use YouTube wisely.
It is known that YouTube is not only benefiting students, but it is inspiring them and making them enjoy school a lot more. YouTube allows students to explore and learn things visually. It allows the student to be in control- they can pause the video if they need time to write something down and they can rewind if they need to see something again.
YouTube also has special YouTube channels that can greatly benefit the classroom such as a channel for teachers and there is also an education channel as well. These channels allow the searcher to find videos related to their educational topic. If YouTube is making specific channels for schools to use…Why wouldn’t classroom use them?
There are many ways to incorporate YouTube in classroom such as starting to get a discussion by showing interesting video clips that get the students involved in the lesson. The students will start questioning and become involved in the lesson. It also allows students to be curious and learn more, which supports inquiry based learning. YouTube allows the student to continue learning even out of the classroom. Also, YouTube is a cheap field trip… you can show your students something that they may not have been able to see without the YouTube clip. It also helps you teach multiple learners (visual, kinesthetic, etc.) in your classroom. By adding a video in your lesson, it will help the visual learners and it can also be beneficial to exceptional learners. YouTube also give students another way to present what they learned by making a video and sharing it with the class. Another benefit of YouTube is teachers can video lectures or lessons and posts them on YouTube. This way if a student is missing or needs to review the lesson they are able to again. By teachers recording lessons can also help to have a flipped classroom. And while students are using YouTube it is helping them learn about digital literacy.
Using YouTube in the classroom increases the eagerness of most students to learn and expand upon what has been taught in class. Of course, teachers can only provide YouTube opportunities if the students demonstrate responsibility and act as good digital citizens. Since the good, the bad, and the ugly is everywhere in our world, parents and teachers must take the risk and use YouTube as our youth can search and find bad anywhere – not just YouTube.
Disadvantage of Youtube for Students
YouTube may seem like a unique tool that has many great resources, but along with a tool of that calibre there are many downfalls with it. Today, teachers are using YouTube to assist them with their lessons, but are they teaching them the useful ways to use this site? YouTube not only consists of valid and helpful information, but also invalid and unhelpful information.
YouTube has many issues that revolve around privacy, most stream from the fact that almost anybody can see what a user posts on YouTube. There have been many cases where people have found their information has been created into a YouTube site, or video.
The validity of different posts on YouTube can be a concern when using this tool in the classroom. What information is true, and what is not? Is there any way you can tell if the information that you are reviewing is true? When students uses YouTube they do not think about whether the information they are choosing is valid. If you were a teacher it would be very difficult to monitor if the students were using correct information, or not. The abundance of videos on YouTube is hard to sift through to find valid information. Not only is there a lot of resources on YouTube, but there are many subscribers that are able to post their thoughts and opinions on YouTube.
Posting information on YouTube and creating an account is a simple process that almost anyone can do. Therefore, it is not a violence free tool. Many videos that are on YouTube consist of inappropriate content, or violence. Teachers who are using YouTube in a classroom have to realize the information on YouTube can easily distract the students and get them off topic easily. There is no way to block the inappropriate content on YouTube when you are using it in a classroom.
YouTube is not always a convenient site for searching information that you want more information on and it appearing below. Most often tasteless and vulgar videos show up on the right hand column. If students were looking for resources these types of videos would be in contact with your students.
