Flickr — AEJMC Hot Topics

Widgets and Wikis for the Web 2.0 Journo

June 29, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Allissa Richardson, Morgan State University

On the first day of class, my students set up their “e-newsrooms.” The technology-shy students usually groan—then ask me what Facebook, Scribd, Twitter and WordPress have to do with being a journalist. I understand AEJMC begs this question too. Please allow me to share how my affinity for social media in the classroom began and evolved.

FACEBOOK’S SLIPPERY SLOPE

At some point in the Spring 2009 semester, I realized my students were not accessing Blackboard to fetch assignments or to view the assigned readings I had suggested in class. Students were coming to class unprepared and—even worse!—trying to pretend that they had done their homework. I began to think there must be a better way to reach them. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Allissa Richardson, Drop.io, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Morgan State University, SlideShare, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Sribd, Twitter, Wordpress, YouTube, Zoho Quizzes

Incorporating Social Media in the Classroom: A Few Examples and An Overview

June 29, 2010 By AEJMC 1 Comment

By Leslie-Jean Thornton, Arizona State University

I’ve seen so many benefits from using social media in my classes that I have no wish to teach without such tools, no matter the subject. They enhance my ability to teach skills in real-world situations while allowing the growth of community within and without the group.

Twitter is my current multi-tasking favorite device, but content-management systems (such as WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous and the like) are almost as versatile. In my classes, they’re backed by our use of individual services that include Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Docs, Delicious, Twitpic, Google and Yahoo maps, various RSS readers, Skype, and SEO/audience analyzers. I haven’t quite worked out the particulars yet, but I intend to use Foursquare (and its mash-up companion, Fourwhere) as both a model and tool in classes this fall. It plays on an interesting reward dynamic that appears to be growing in popularity in the marketplace. It’s worthy of study for that reason alone, but I’m thinking along craftier lines. Perhaps we’ll develop an in-class badge system… [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Arizona State University, Delicious, Flickr, Google, Leslie-Jean Thornton, Posterous, RSS, Skype, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, Wordpress, YouTube

Teaching Research Methods with Social Media Tools

June 15, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Kelli Burns, University of South Florida

Today’s tech-savvy student generation is actively participating in social networking and other online communities, so most students not only understand how to use Web 2.0 teaching tools, they thrive in the environment when Web communication solutions are integrated in the classroom.—K. Driscoll, 2007, p. 10

Social media tools can enrich a research methods class by providing students with a way to collect data, share research, and monitor online conversations. At the beginning of the course, students create their own blogs using WordPress and then throughout the course, use the blogs to post reports, photos, videos, and podcasts. The five social media assignments that have been assigned in this course are described below. These assignments include (1) a social media monitoring project which asks students to monitor social media sites for conversations about a client; (2) an ethnography project where students collect data through photographs that are posted to a photo-sharing site; (3) an interview project where student create MP3s of their interviews and upload them to their blogs as podcasts; (4) a focus group blog project where students collect data on a blog over several days; and (5) a survey project requiring students to create a video and an online survey. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Blogging, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Kelli Burns, Myspace, Research, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Twitter, University of South Florida, YouTube

Extreme Social Media

March 6, 2010 By AEJMC Leave a Comment

By Brad King, Assistant Professor, Ball State University

On Thursday Oct 15, Hallmark Homes Inc., a home builder in the Muncie, Jnd. area, approached the Ball State University Department of Journalism with an interesting request: assemble three teams of students for a project with ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, a popular television program through which a family receives a new house in seven days. The show would be coming to Bunker Hill, about 70 miles north of the university.

Derek Wilder, Hallmark’s chief executive officer, wanted to make sure that the thousands of volunteers, builders and sponsors — many of whom don’t receive recognition on the television program — had the opportunity to have their stories told. The catch for the team, though, was that the show won’t air until sometime in January, which meant we had to build not only the network, but the media outreach as well. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: Blogging, Brad King, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Social Media, Tech Meme, TV, Twitter, YouTube