So far in my life and work social media promises more than it delivers. I can see the linking, sharing and thinking potential of online forums and tools, but I haven’t made them ‘work’ for me yet. Discussion forums un-discussed, tweets un-followed and Facebook stalking are my current level of engagement. Despite trying ‘tweet deck’ I still can’t find interesting things on Twitter. I can’t get my students to bother answering my discussion forum questions or comment on each other’s work unless they get marks. I have had some luck using apps as data gathering tools and I enjoy using back channel apps when I’m teaching. I’m looking forward to realising the potential of these resources through this course.
Getting used to social media
23 Tuesday Sep 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Research and reflections 
Hi Fell001, the noise from social media can definitely be quite distracting if you engage without actually having an clear outcome. In another participant’s blog, Chris Swanwick (a CreATE Learning Designer), commented on a similar concern — the importance of gaining enough understanding about each individual tool so that your ‘personal lens’ around choosing and engaging in any tool will be considered and/or strategic. We’re hoping that this PD programme will provide you with enough information so that you can become an educated consumer. Welcome and glad to see you in here! Cheers, Steve
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Re: “I can’t get my students to bother answering my discussion forum questions or comment on each other’s work unless they get marks.”
You might like this flowchart
http://patricklowenthal.com/2014/01/infographic-arent-students-participating-discussion-board/
However in general I am not a big fan of grading discussion posts for many reasons (first ones in usually have the advantage, can cripple open discussion, hard to rate fairly etc) but I think there are ways to design tasks so that the discussion has intrinsic value for the student, and helps them build towards an assigned task.
Interested to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this!
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