Blogging and Social Media Tool – io3

MODERN Tool Rating: 4/5
Category: Blogging and Social Media Tool

Website: www.facebook.com
Price: Free

1. Watch

Facebook is one of the most popular social networks. Although it was not created for educational purposes, it has great potential to improve the learning experience of students. Instructors can share course resources, fire up discussions, promote collaborations, improve relationships between students and incorporate an array of learning tools (such as videos, images, boards and discussions).

3 Reasons to use Facebook:

Communication on Facebook is very powerful. If you need to reach out to students or colleagues the message will be in their pocket within seconds, no matter where they are trying to hide.
Facebook is an ideal platform for improving language skills. Students get a priceless opportunity to practice reading and writing in English. They can see the need to improve their English in order to explain themselves properly.
Many older students and parents already have Facebook on their phones and tablets, they have constant access to course information without having to log in to a completely different system.

Here are just a few of the possibilities with Facebook:

Create closed groups. Participants will enter only by invitation and no one else will be able to see the contents, discussions, posts etc. inside the group.
Create polls to receive feedback about a course or a program they are thinking of implementing, to request the opinion of their audience on a specific topic, or even to generate statistics
Create questionnaires to comprehend the likes, dislikes and interests of their current or future students and build the course around them.

Upload course contents, material and resources in their account or the closed group they created.
Use all available learning and communication multimedia tools Facebook offers. There can be videos, presentations, images, pictures, discussion groups, chats, private messaging, sharing, liking, highlighting and promoting.
Create a friendly learning atmosphere where students to introduce themselves, connect and collaborate

2. Read

Interested in finding out more about Facebook and how you can use it your class or lecture room? We have completed a pedagogic assessment of this tool which details its strengths and weaknesses based on its potential for innovative teaching strategies.

Download “facebook - io3” Facebook1.pdf – Downloaded 442 times – 933 KB

3. Learn From Others

We collected and created some exemplar videos which include tutorials, case studies of educators using this tool and more. Click to watch and learn.

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4. Get Started with Facebook

Step 1

Step 1: Open Facebook homepage: https://www.facebook.com/

Step 2

Step 2: You will need to be at least 13 years old to create a Facebook account.

Step 3

Step 3: Click on ‘Sign Up’, and enter your personal information, for example name, date of birth, and country of origin.

Step 4

Step 4: A verification email will be sent directly to you, click the link on the email which will take you to the next stage.

Step 5

Step 5: Edit your profile

Step 6

Step 6: Choose a starter template, which will act as the basic design/layout of your blog.

Step 7

Step 7: Click “Start Blogging” and “New Post” to create your first new blog post

5. Action – Create your first class Facebook Group

Now that you know all about Facebook – it’s time to get going and test it out!

Create a Facebook group for your class where you can:

post assignments
make announcements
remind students about important deadlines

Your learners can use it to:

ask and answer questions
extend the classroom discussion beyond the classroom

Blogger – io3

MODERN Tool Rating: 4/5
Category: Blogging and Social Media Tool

Website: www.blogger.com
Price: Free

1. Watch

Blogger is an open source tool from Google that allows its users to create blogs and automatically submit them to one of the largest search engines available making it easier for students to find and read. Blogger It is completely free and includes hosting and analytics. Displaying ads is allowed and, in that case, its users share in the profits.

3 Reasons to use Blogger in the classroom:

Blogger is simple to use for anyone just starting out with a blog and is a favourite of teachers and learners alike.
Blogger makes it easy for learners to share course work with their peers, teachers and others.
Blogger can be used to run a collaborative project. As communication, teamwork, shared problem solving and research skills are important for tertiary level education and the modern workplace, this tool is useful where these skill areas are concerned.

Here are just a few of the possibilities with Blogger:

Share materials, news, downloads, links etc.
Facilitate online discussions and collaboration
Have learners work in small groups to write and post summaries of content covered in class/courses and to build a compendium for content covered over a period of time
Get students to do their writing assignments in the form of blog posts

Use blogs for peer learning. Encourage students to post comments on each others postings
Use blogs for projects where students can include videos, clips, audio, text and images
Challenge your students to write, record and post tutorials about certain concepts of things you teach them

2. Read

Interested in finding out more about Blogger and how you can use it your class or lecture room? We have completed a pedagogic assessment of this tool which details its strengths and weaknesses based on its potential for innovative teaching strategies.

Download “blogger - io3” Blogger.pdf – Downloaded 456 times – 790 KB

3. Learn From Others

We collected and created some exemplar videos which include tutorials, case studies of educators using this tool and more. Click to watch and learn.

The request cannot be completed because you have exceeded your quota.

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The request cannot be completed because you have exceeded your quota.

4. Get Started with Blogger

Step 1

Step 1: Go to www.blogger.com

Step 2

Step 2: Sign in with your Google Account

Step 3

Step 3: Confirm your identity. Enter a “Display Name” to be used to sign your blog posts and click “Continue”.

Step 4

Step 4: Click Create Blog

Step 5

Step 5: Select a “Blog title” and an available URL for your blog. You can check if the URL you are considering is available by clicking “Check Availability”(if it is unavailable try adding more letters and don’t use things like hyphens, under scores, colons etc).

Step 6

Step 6: Choose a starter template, which will act as the basic design/layout of your blog.

Step 7

Step 7: Click “Start Blogging” and “New Post” to create your first new blog post

5. Action – Choose the right type of Learner Blog for your class

Now that you have had a good introduction into Blogger – it’s time to think about what sort of blog your learners should create.

Here are some ideas:

Passion/Knowledge Blog: Your learners will write about something they are passionate about or a topic they know well. The goal is for them to share your knowledge about the subject and establish themselves as experts in their field. Great for VET – trainee hairdresser could create a hair inspiration blog!

Class-related response Blog: Blog where learners engage and respond to content learned in class. Great for peer learning and encouraging debate etc.

Interdisciplinary Blog: Learners discuss concepts, articles, media, labs, etc.

Current Events Blog: Learners write a post about a current events topic and explain the event and/or share their thoughts about it. Very useful in HEI – where students can seek out new research and discuss its applications.

Vlog (4 minutes maximum): Perhaps you want to your learners to present their ideas orally instead of in writing? Vlog means video blog. Learners will need to embed their videos in their blog posts and provide an introduction as to what the vlog covers.

Collabo-blog: This is a great way to get to get learners working together. This works best with two, or three learners, four is the max. In educational posts, it a good idea to get students to color code who wrote what, so you can get a sense for how well they collaborated.

Wordless blog: Great for learners in field of the arts/creative industries. Learners are asked to “Write” their post using only multimedia content (photographs, gifs, vines, memes, etc.)

Most importantly, the multimedia content must communicate a message or tell a story. You may want to ask them to add short captions to help convey their meaning

Blog : Blogging and Social Media Tool - io3