This work is licensed by Patrick Crispen to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. All other rights reserved.

Social Media 101: Classroom Collaboration after the Bell

Patrick Douglas Crispen, Ed.D.

NetSquirrel.com

Our Goals

• Discuss why social media matters• Explain what social media is• Tour the social media landscape (including

the ‘big five’)• Examine some social media tools that you

may want to use in your classroom• Show you where to get more information

about social media• Do all of this in ENGLISH!

Three Disclaimers

• This really is a “101” presentation.• I am more of a social media consumer

than a producer.• This is NOT a lecture!

– Feel free to chime in at ANY time.

HOW BIG IS THIS?

The State of the Net

• In October 2011, the number of social networkers exceeded the number of Internet users in 2006.– 70% (800MM) use Facebook– Americans spend, on average, 6.8 hours per

month on Social Networking sites.

Meeker (2011)

Facebook Statistics

• 800MM global active Facebook users• More than 50% of those active users

access Facebook in any given day• More than 900 million objects that people

interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

• The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 80 community pages, groups, and events

Facebook (2011)

2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Image: Wikipedia

Twitter Japan

• http://blog.twitter.com/2011/06/global-pulse.html

• During the March 11, 2011, earthquake in Japan, the volume of Tweets sent per second spiked to more than 5,000 TPS five separate times after the quake and ensuing tsunami Image: Chris Glass

Arab Spring 2011

Image: Wikipedia

Social Media’s Impact

• Most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of 2011– Egypt– Jan25– Libya– Bahrain– protest

• “Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them”

Huang (2011)

SO WHAT EXACTLY IS IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Umbrella (Ella Ella Eh Eh Eh) Definitions

• “Use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue.” -- Wikipedia

• “Social network sites are a type of networked public with four properties that are not typically present in face-to-face public life: persistence, searchability, exact copyability, and invisible audiences” (boyd, 2011).

Gartner’s Definition

• Web environments where individual information is aggregated, presented and shared.

• Applications are provided to – Document and filter connections between

individuals,– Present content on profiles, – Support various multimedia, and – Facilitate communications between people.

Lowendahl (2011)

Gartner’s Definition (cont’d)

“Social media sites attract a critical mass of students to provide healthy communities and opportunities for people who are connected by events, products or demographics to develop contacts based on personal, professional and educational backgrounds or interests.”

Lowendahl (2011)

Participatory/Social Media Tools

• Blogs (e.g., Blogger, WordPress)

• Social Networking (e.g., Facebook, Google+)

• Document Managing/Editing (e.g., Dropbox, Google Docs)

• Social bookmarking (e.g., Delicious, Diigo)

• Social news (e.g, Reddit, Digg)

• …Image: Wikipedia

THE SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Top Social Media Sites - 2004

Royal Pingdom (9/26/2011)

Tracking Searches and Visitors

Top Social Media Sites - 2011

Royal Pingdom (9/26/2011)

• World’s most popular social networking service

• Create a profile• Add friends• Post content and replies• Cuss when Zuckerberg changes the

privacy settings or layout … again

Tip: Facebook for Groups

• Many groups and events create their own Facebook pages.

• You do not need to be a Facebook subscriber to view these pages.

www.facebook.com/ludotruck

• Microblogging site (140 characters max)• #hashtags = used to mark topics

– See http://hashtags.org/ for examples

• Trends– See Twitter’s side-bar– Another resource: www.whatthetrend.com

• @ = used to call out usernames on Twitter• Follow = subscribe to someone’s tweets

Tip: Following Conferences/Events

twitter.com/search• Search Twitter for the

event’s hashtag– #GAETC

• You can see top tweets, all tweets, or only those with hyperlinks

• Professional networking social media site• “I thought [LinkedIn] was an email inbox

flooding service whose sole purpose in life was to remind me that a guy I went to high school with would like me to join LinkedIn so I can spam everyone I ever met” – John Stewart, The Daily Show (9/27/2011)

• Google’s answer to Facebook• New social networking site launched June

28, 2011– Open on September 20, 2011 to the everyone

18 years and older– Google will soon open this to users over the

age of 13

A Few Google+ Features

• Circles– Groups of ‘friends’– People can see your

list of circles but not who is in those circles

• Hangouts– Live video chat with up

to 10 people

• Sparks– Social search tagging

• Games• Photos• What’s hot

• Microblogging platform • Users post text, images, videos, links,

quotes and audio to their tumblelog• Users can follow other users, or choose to

make their tumblelog private• Stats: 12BIL+ total posts, 33MM total

blogs (11/2011)

Source: Wikipedia

OTHER INTERESTING SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

KPCB on Social Media (2011)

(Meeker, 2011)

My First Spotify Playlist

http://goo.gl/v0GYf• To ‘test’ Spotify, I created

my own playlist using Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs

• Missing artists: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Kinks

• That aside, Spotify has an impressive collection of artists, albums, and songs.

SOCIAL MEDIA SITES FOR THE CLASSROOM

edmodo.com

voicethread.com

delicious.com

OH NOES! DO WE NEED A K-12 SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY?!

Well, Maybe Not

• Our first reaction is to want to create a school- or district-wide social media policy.

• A better approach would be to create communications security policies that are device-neutral.– “Employees [and students] are rarely able to synthesize

multiple related policies into a comprehensive set of rules that govern their behavior”

• Gartner strategic planning assumption: “By 2014, less than 30% of large enterprises will block all access to external social media.”

Walls (2011)

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

checkusernames.com

• Checkusernames.com lets you check the use of your brand or username on over 160 social networks.

• Tip: Hold your mouse over a particular social network’s logo to see a brief description.

Marta Kagan on Social Media (2010)

www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-is-social-media-now-4747765

• Engaging, entertaining, and visually stunning 2010 presentation on the state of social media.

• Follow-up to her earlier presentation titled “What the F**k is Social Media” (also available on SlideShare).

Wikipedia

goo.gl/M9CWW• Wikipedia (which itself is

a social media site) has a great article on “social media.”

• Scroll down the page for a detailed list of application examples by type.

royal.pingdom.com

• Pingdom is a commercial service that tracks website uptimes, downtimes, and performance.

• Their Royal Pingdom blog is a great resource for data about social media sites.

References

boyd, d. (2007). Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Facebook (2011). Statistics. Facebook, Inc. Retrieved October 22, 2011, from https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Huang, C. (June 6, 2011). Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report. The National. Retrieved November 1, 2011, from http://goo.gl/CY4jU

Lowendahl, J. (2011). Hype cycle for Education, 2011. Gartner. Obtained November 1, 2011, from http://gartner.com/

Meeker, M. (2011). Internet trends 2011. Retrieved October 21, 2011, from http://kpcb.com/internettrends2011

Walls, A. (2011). Do you need a social media security policy? Gartner. Retrieved November 1, 2011, from http://gartner.com/

Our Goals

• Discuss why social media matters• Explain what social media is• Tour the social media landscape (including

the ‘big five’)• Examine some social media tools that you

may want to use in your classroom• Show you where to get more information

about social media• Do all of this in ENGLISH!

This work is licensed by Patrick Crispen to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. All other rights reserved.