Technology in the Educational SettingSocial Websites in School

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Facebook-Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.

-Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.

Benefits for in the classroom

-Teachers and students can have a better means of communication outside of the classroom.

-Its something that today’s kids like to do and are always talking about

-Class discussions can be lead on Facebook.

-Keeps students actively engaged

Reflection on Facebook

• To me I think students would be more comfortable with using facebook as a class discussion than actually being in the classroom its self

• Facebook allows different networks and groups to which many users can join. It also allows privacy settings on basis of networks. Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects

Myspace

-MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media, owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006.- According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.

Benefits of Myspace• MySpace has a Groups feature which allows a group of users to share a

common page and message board. Groups can be created by anybody, and the moderator of the group can choose for anyone to join, or to approve or deny requests to join.

• Bulletins are posts that are posted on to a "bulletin board" for everyone on a MySpace user's friends list to see. Bulletins can be useful for contacting an entire friends list without resorting to messaging users individually.

• In early 2006, MySpace introduced MySpaceIM, an instant messenger that uses one's MySpace account as a screen name. A MySpace user logs in to the client using the same e-mail associated with his or her MySpace account. Unlike other parts of MySpace, MySpaceIM is stand-alone software for Microsoft Windows. Users who use MySpaceIM get instant notification of new MySpace messages, friend requests, and comments.

Myspace reflections

• Essentially myspace can be a helpful classroom tool both inside or outside the classroom.

• Myspace can also be a used for class discussions and announcements for upcoming classes

Twitter

• What we have to do is deliver to people the best and freshest most relevant information possible. We think of Twitter as it's not a social network, but it's an information network. It tells people what they care about as it is happening in the world.—Evan Williams

-Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access.

-Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide. It is sometimes described as "SMS of the Internet.” The use of Twitter’s application programming interface for sending and receiving text messages by other applications often eclipses direct use of Twitter.

Uses of Twitter in Education

• The Distance College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, used Twitter with native Chinese students as a tool to train communicative and cultural competence. Students had to post a certain number of English tweets and react to the tweets of their fellow students. Twitter was viewed as a supplement to practice in authentic environment different aspects of the target language as it was taught in the classroom.

• The University of Vienna, Austria, used Twitter as an evaluation platform for student ratings. Every student had to send a tweet after each course unit with feedback to the teacher. Twitter turned out to be "a useful tool for evaluating a course formatively. Because of Twitter's simple use and the electronic handling of data, the administrative effort remains small.”

• At the University of Texas at Dallas, Twitter has been incorporated into the actual classroom setting of History courses with big groups of students. This innovative approach gives more students the opportunity to express their views in class discussions. Another advantage of this approach is that the limit of characters forces them to get to the central point.

Twitter Reflections• Twitter is simple to use in the classroom

setting. The teacher can set up an account and have all their students follow them.

• Twitter could be ideal for reminding students about homework, trips and such things, especially as they can enter their mobile phone number to be alerted when one of their ‘friends’ updates their account. The advantage is that you don’t need to know the phone numbers of students to get messages onto their device: they are the ones who authorize their mobile phone from the website and they subscribe to your Twitter feed.

Conclusion-Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace are all similar in a sense. Its just about which one you would prefer to use in the classroom.

-These social networking sites help engage more students at a time in classroom discussions than the 3 or 4 at a time you would have in classroom discussions.

-Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information. It's easy to stay updated on an incredibly wide variety of topics.