Beyond Email: 5 Social Media Tools for Class Communications

Wendy Tietzwtietz@kent.edu

Kent State University

You can access everything later at

• http://teachingintroaccounting.com/

• Email me at wtietz@kent.edu

How do you feel about social media?

Reasons to embrace social media

• Power to engage • “Meet them where they live” • Social media is not going away• Businesses want to hire workers who

understand social media

% of Global Fortune 100 Companies using:

http

://w

ww

.hon

gkia

t.co

m/b

log/

55-in

tere

stin

g-s

oci

al-m

edi

a-in

fogr

aph

ics/

86% of U.S. Fortune 100 Companies are using at least one of the following…

http

://w

ww

.hon

gkia

t.co

m/b

log/

55-in

tere

stin

g-s

oci

al-m

edi

a-in

fogr

aph

ics/

The Email Divide: Teens are Choosing Other Communication Methods

Source: http://bit.ly/dYvRJE

Overview

Twitter

Uses for Twitter

• Communicate with students– Announcements– Reminders– Homework hints

• In-class back channel• Follow professionals

Why Twitter has been useful…

• Text messages

• Integration with Blackboard Vista8

• 140 character limit - FOCUS

Overview

85% of college students use Facebook…

…70% of them log in every single day

(Source: http://blog.socialmaximizer.com/10-bizarre-facts-you-ought-to-know-about-facebook/)

Friend your students?

Facebook group?

Facebook page?

Why Facebook has been useful…

• Very popular with students

• Can have Twitter tweets pushed to Facebook page automatically

Overview

Why Posterous has been useful…

• Communication

• Auto posts to Facebook and Twitter

• Longer posts than Twitter and Facebook

• Gives you URLs for “answers” to common questions

Overview

• Social network

• http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship/

Ning Components

• Discussion forum• Videos• Inbox• Member listing, profiles, pics• Blog postings• Latest activity feed

Why Ning has been useful…

• Communication

• Facilitates interaction between students and professor

• Facilitates student to student interactions

• Lets you listen to the class chatter

Financial accounting class Spring 2011 (601 students total)

Overview

Overview

We can use social media too…

What to do next….

• Pick ONE tool (Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Ning)

• Implement that one tool

• Experiment

http://teachingintroaccounting.com/

Questions????Wendy Tietz…wtietz@kent.edu

http://teachingintroaccounting.com/Using technology in teaching accounting blog

Narrated how-to slide shows for:•Twitter basics

•Adding a Twitter feed to Blackboard Vista8•Facebook page creation and management

•Posterous basics•Ning network creation

•LinkedIn basics