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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

How To Integrate Social Networks And Blogs Into Traditional Curriculums

May 29, 2010 By AEJMC 1 Comment

By Keith Quesenberry, Temple University

Introduction

Social Media is growing and changing the way we live, the way we do business and the way we connect. The latest numbers indicate that in December 2009 the social network Facebook surpassed 100 million active users in the U.S. and over 350 million worldwide (Smith, 2010). Blogs are, well, everywhere. The latest number I could find was in 2008 when the Blog Herald reported that there were roughly 200 million blogs (Helmond, 2008). Since then it seems people have given up counting. Even CEOs are blogging. Sun Microsystems CEO Blog gets 400,000 hits a month (Balwani, 2009). Bloggers are now legitimate media gaining access to and asking questions of the President at Whitehouse press conferences (Baker, 2009). And Facebook has become large enough and influential enough to draw fire from U.S Senators over its privacy settings (Patel, 2010).

Social media is here to stay and will only further infiltrate how we socialize, conduct business and learn. But how do we integrate emerging Web 2.0 technologies into an established, traditional university curriculum? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Features Tagged With: AEJMC, Blackboard, Blogging, Buddypress, Facebook, Keith Quesenberry, Ning, Social Media, Social Media in the Classroom, Social Networking, Temple University, Wordpress