Social Media & Learning – So Natural
This semester we started working on our seminar project. As a really enthusiastic Twitter user and an Instructional Design student, it only seemed natural for me to check the great potential of using Twitter for Learning.
This idea actually came to me when I first started to notice that I use Twitter for learning. I used HootSuite to track keywords on subjects that I care about such as web design, instructional design, UI, e-learning and many more. This helped me meet people from these areas and learn much more about these subjects from reading their Tweets. Then I started creating lists for each subject, and the knowledge came flowing in.
I guess the more you learn to use Twitter and its many applications and advantages, the more it gets clear that there’s a big potential for using it for learning.
This week we received a green light from our lecturer, so now there’s a lot of reading to do. I found this nice post with 100 inspiring ways to use social media in the classroom – some really good ideas.
We have a few ideas in mind for our research, but we still have some time until we actually set the research. So if you have any ideas or stories about using social media for learning, I would really love to hear them!
HootSuite vs TweetDeck – My point of view
Okay, Ive been using HootSuite for a while now, however recently I’ve been experiencing some technical problems with it, and that made me give TweeDeck a try. I still haven’t decided which one is better for my needs, but here are some thoughts…
Design
I definitely prefer the dark background in TweetDeck, I think it gives a more clear, organized look, also, I think HootSuite’s design looks a little out-of-date.
Logo
That’s an easy one… HootSuite definitely wins here! I just LOVE the owl logo, so cute and smart.
User Interface
In HootSuite there are tabs and columns for different topics, lists, users and so on, while in TweetDeck you only add columns. At first this seemed like a disadvantage, but after I’ve been using it for a while I can say that I really prefer to see all of my information in one place, where all I have to do as a user is scroll right or left between the columns, as opposed to HootSuite where you first have to enter some tabs, then scroll inside columns and so on. Also, in HooutSuite the numbet of columns you can add for one tab is limited to 4. No Limitation in the deck.
In HootSuite, a big part of the user screen is the writing bar, where users write their tweets, in TweetDeck you can make this bar hide by pressing one tiny button, that’s great because it gives you much more space to see all the tweets of the people you follow.
As for the options buttons (RT, Reply, DM) I think both apps are lacking in this area. The navigation in these buttons is pretty difficuly and very unfriendly. I also don’t like the fack that in TweetDeck links are automatically underlined… that adds some cognitive load which is really unnecessary.
Functionality
Both offer pretty much the same functionality. In TweetDeck you can’t add a column of your own tweets, you have to first make a special search and then add this as a column – that’s pretty annoying, it definitely should be one of the core columns.
Language
A big minus goes here to TweetDeck – no support in Hebrew, it simply doesn’t display tweets that are written in Hebrew.
To sum up… Both apps are pretty cool and useful, they offer pretty much the same functionality, but each one gives something a bit different.
So what’s your opinion?
OR
This week’s favorite Tweets
Here are my favorite Tweets of this week.
#1 Facebook
15 applications for a better facebook page
Do you know there are over 20 million people join as fans of Facebook Fan Pages daily? If you can get 5% of those people to land and join your fan page, the impact will be significant. Time to boost popularity of your fan page with the right Facebook applications.
Via inspiredmag
#2 Web Design
68 fresh and great examples of single page website design
One of the interesting trends which I noticed recently is to showcase your work in single page design. It’s kind of ironic to see what designers can do with single pages as modern age designers love to experiment with things and observe how people interact with their work. Even though this is not a common trend to follow but still as the new design styles come up, and as more and more designers notice them and make use of them in their work, this kind of trends emerge.
Via themeflash
#3 Interior Design
Unique and beautiful bath tubs
As a well-known bath-lover I found this post really cool – some amazing crazy bath tubs designs.
Via bit rebels
#4 Photography
English Russia – The unknown side of Russia
All people know Russia is a Northern country with snow, frost, cold winter. All keep in mind pictures of taiga, Siberia, polar bears and vodka. Well, it’s all true, we all know now that 65% of Russia is covered with permafrost, but there is one fact than less people know. Russia has a territory that is located more to South than Milano, Nice, Monte Carlo and other places of European South. And this territory occupies more square than France or Germany. Meet Sochi, the Winter Olympics 2014 host. This Russia doesn’t look like Russia at all, maybe the next place for your vacation?
and to finish up with some humor, check this cool funny Twitter comics – so true!
Hope you enjoyed these links. Have a great week!
Tweet Blindness – A thought
I realized today while going over my Twitter account, reading tweets of people I follow, that in an unconscious way, I was ignoring certain tweets…
The tweets I was ignoring were from people/companies who tweet way too much often! I think that tweeting that often (like 8-10 tweets in a row) is not a good idea! To me it doesn’t look serious to tweet that much. It’s great that you have many ideas or thoughts that you want to share, but try to do it wisely, otherwise people will get bored, or like me unconsciously ignore your tweets. It really is a shame, I’m not talking about spammers, but about people or companies I chose to follow and enjoy the content of their tweets…
It reminds me of another phenomenon called Banner Blindness – some tests show that consciously or unconsciously people ignored information that was presented in banners.
What are your thoughts? Am I the only one who is experiencing this? I would love to hear.
In a more personal level…
Hello!
This blog was actually created as a part of a big assignment in a course called Knowledge Management. The purpose of this assignment is to practice social networks and the use of it as a tool for knowledge management, distribution and capture.
So far the only social network I was really involved in was Twitter (I love it!) , However this experience with opening a blog at wordress showed me I have a lot more to learn and experience.
We chose a subject that we’re really passionate about – web design, We really hope that by doing this assignment we will be able to get more knowledge, skills, and expand our social network around this subject and in general.
So please feel free to join us and help us learn all there is about web design and of course about blogging:)
Yours, Sivan.
About
Hey Everybody!
We are Sivan and Alex , Instructional Design students in Holon Institute of Technology (HIT).
Our main interests are Instructional Design and Web Design – those two can go along together at many cases.
In this blog we want to share and expand our knowledge about those 2 topics. Also, this semester we started our Seminar project, the subject we chose is Twitter and Learning. Both of us love Twitter and we immediately saw the great potential of using it for learning, so this is actually another topic we’ll be talking about here.
Feel free to join us, we’re actually pretty nice people 
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