Friday 30 April 2010

Facebook - A Tool for Social Learning

I found this resource via a tweet by @zaidlearn on Twitter. It is good to see what other educators are doing with social networking sites that are currently banned in some educational institutions. Twitter itself has already proven to be a great place to share links and news as well as share opinions, entertain and be entertained. I’ve learnt things too – recently I watched a webcast by @knitpurlgurl, one of the people I follow on Twitter and learnt how to crochet after many years of trying and failing. She is such a good teacher and she explained the steps so carefully and in great detail with support from her chat room of viewers. More colleges are joining Twitter although I am never sure if they have a strategy or are just doing it because they don't want to be left out.  But this post is not about Twitter it is about Facebook.

Facebook is no longer banned for staff in our local community college but it currently is for students. Therefore it would be interesting to see if lecturers could be encouraged to demand that this ban be lifted on the basis of suggested use of Facebook for social learning. Not sure how it could be used in a learning resource centre so I am posting this for my own reference and a future resource. I am considered

The presentation here has some good advice for preparing to use Facebook as a learning tool. The presentation has audio and some information for anyone who is not on Facebook and never used it.




As well as the presentation this website also includes links to background reading.

The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies provides a free resource from the Social Learning Academy on How to Use Facebook for Social Learning.

And from more elearning resource sites:

100 Ways You Should Be Using Facebook in Your Classroom

100 Awesome Facebook Apps for Productivity and Learning

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention and yummy Facebook post. Good luck on your project :)

    Cheers :)

    Zaid(Learn)

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  2. Thanks Zaid,

    I am pleased to say there have been some positive developments after this post. The future is very interesting in elearning and social learning. Then isn't it always?

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  3. I agree... Many educational research using facebook as their learning media... But, I prefer Moodle...

    ReplyDelete