Perhaps because we’re academics we shy away from superlatives like “most import” trends of 2017. Still, this report from Social Media Weekly has some insights that are important for the work that we do. Some of the highlights include the first chart that shows just how dominant Facebook is in the Social Media scene and, related, that Facebook has nearly made it’s transition to being mobile friendly and a significant number of people access Facebook only via mobile devices. In our findings, Twitter seems to be the social network of choice for scholars, but how to drive traffic from Facebook to Twitter is a frequent discussion topic at Social Medium meetings. The importance of keeping social media (which includes blogs like this one) mobile-ready is also obvious from these findings. — The Social Mediums.Â
Author: Contently
In this article column from The Chronicle of Higher Education, the author shows how the real-world implications of licenses and how difficult it can be, at times, to choose how we want to share the work that we’re doing. This is particularly important for us as Social Mediums. Not only are we content creators (as any graduate students are), but we’re also content sharers and so we need to know the nuances of licenses–including the myriad Creative Commons licenses and be able to confidently share content on our social media. — Social Mediums
Over the summer The New York Times published a piece about how Google is “taking over” classrooms. The article discusses how Google is taking a significant step to transform the philosophy behind public education, emphasizing skills such as collaboration and problem-solving over rote-learning. The article also raised criticisms about Google’s purposes, signalling that it may not be working purely in the public’s best interest but helping to create future users who depend on Google.Â
The article understandably sparked discussion in the digital world of educators. In higher education in particular, the article was met with some push-back. Inside Higher Education published pieces noting that Google has faced slow adoption rates in college classrooms and warned that services like Google Classrooms (now open to all college instructors) cannot replace traditional Learning Management tools–the most well-known being Blackboard.Â
All this raises interesting questions for those who wish to engage their students digitally. As Social Mediums, issues of data security and ownership are a significant part of our on-going discussions of how to use social media responsibly in education. Is it better to have students using Google Classroom, making use of applications like Google Docs, or using a service like the CUNY Commons, making use of applications like Social Paper? Is it foolish to think students aren’t already using Google or are there reasons for showing that different platforms open you to different considerations about who can use your work, see it, plug it into an algorithm, etc.?
— The Social Mediums
In this post we discuss how to use Google Scholar Alerts to stay on top of newly published scholarship, some of which may be appropriate for sharing via social media. It’s a way to make your searches for relevant content easier and of course to stay-up-to-date on new scholarship in general. — Social Mediums
