Get Social cont’d
Posted on: 18, November 2008
I don’t know if you remember, but in a previous post I mentioned that I had created a blog for my students to sign up to. I didn’t tell them that they HAD to sign up – I just asked them to. Anyway, only 1 student signed up. So, I considered that idea to be a no-go.
My next foray into Web2 for educational purposes, was to spend a bit of time in YouTube having a look at videos. I have looked at YouTube before but it didn’t grab me. Anyway, over the last 2 weeks, some of my students have been utilizing YouTube in their presentations (quite successfully too). That got me thinking ……. I have noticed that whenever I have the students in a computer room, the first thing they do is look at Facebook and/or YouTube.
So, I started thinking that maybe “mixing-up” the variety of communication between myself and my students would be good. So I created a new Facebook page for myself (under a different name – I didn’t want the students accessing my personal Facebook page). I also created a “group”. Surprise, surprise …….. a few hours after I sent the first “invitation” to a group of students, I had “friends”. I am not sure where we are going with this … but I now have a lot of student “friends”. I have a high security level on my new page and the group. Gee, a lot of the kids spend a lot of out-of-class time in Facebook.
I am now interested in trying to utilise Second Life in my classes. I have downloaded the software and I have a look around Second Life but I am not good at moving around in SL. I am going to do more research on it to see what ideas I can come up with.
I am not sure about using MySpace ….. I think a lot of the kids are “over” MySpace. I have cretaed a page for EduSpaceLounge in there but I am not going to do anything with it yet. There isn’t any point putting a lot of stuff into into it, unless the students are allowed to join and I am not interested in MySpace for personal use.
3 Responses to "Get Social cont’d"
19, November 2008 at 8:44 am
A good Send Life blog….
http://www.sl-educationblog.org/
22, November 2008 at 7:14 am
Thank you for the info. I rang ITS and was told that I have to email them with a request to use Second Life in class. Apparently my request goes to the appropriate people and when a decision is made, I will be notified.
I am wondering though Jenny – is there a policy regarding students using Second Life?
I have already signed up to Second Life and I have an avatar. Actually I am onto my second avatar. I deleted the first one because I was experementing with with changing my “look” but I ended up as a really, really ugly thing and I couldn’t figure out how to change my look back to the original, so I deleted it and made another one.
Since then, I have obtained a Second Life for Dummies book (from the library) and I have read a few articles on the net. YouTube also has a lot of resources for SL too.
Any info you could give me would be greatly appreciated.
19, November 2008 at 8:44 am
I have some good resources for using Second Life in learning and also a good network or two to join.
The best thing to do is get yourself an Avatar and get familiar with it. It is pretty addictive.
You might need to ask ITS to let you past Swinburne’s firewalls though.
Have fun!
Jenny