Social media making university lectures more interactive

Here is an article which talks about using social media in lectures to make them more interactive.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/04/turning-a-college-lecture-into-a-conversation-with-coveritlive103.html

Using Facebook, Hoot.me as a Study Tool

I found this interesting article about Facebook application Hoot.me that is connected to studying.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/10/using-facebook-hootme-as-a-study-tool284.html

Blog entry worth reading

Please read this blog entry by a teacher of English in Chile. He explains how connectivism effects his teaching and how he uses his PLN (Personal Learning Network).

Profesor Baker's blog: a bit of everything

He refers to George Siemens whose ideas on connectivism have a great impact on education:

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

This is the presentation I mentioned during class. Let me quote the Ted description:

"Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script -- give students video lectures to watch at home, and do "homework" in the classroom with the teacher available to help."

Also, here's the link for his academy: Khan Academy

Say Something in Welsh

I am aware that the focus of our seminar is learning English with social media, but I must share a gem I have found: Say Something in Welsh.

This website claims to teach you Welsh simply by making you repeat phrases you hear. I cannot decide whether one can really learn a foreign tongue this way, but it seems fairly efficient as long as speech is concerned. I managed to repeat the phrase “I like speaking Welsh,” but I am positive that speakers of Welsh would have had a hard time repressing their desire to laugh upon hearing me. Nevertheless, the aforementioned website is worth checking out.

Using 'Txting' to Teach Native Languages

In found an interesting article about text messaging and social media, how it helped students to learn native language.]

read here

Group blogs

We have agreed to form small groups and research particular  topics within Social Media and learning learning. The groups agreed to do some background research on their topics and decided to set up their own research blogs.

The group blogs will be available form the class blog, in the block on the right. The first one is on Twitter, please follow these blogs, too.