Despite my extensive use of social media and my natural inclination to network socially, I don’t think I do much interaction using social media, beyond transactional messages or self-promoting ones. On either Twitter or Facebook, much of my posts involve bragging about my family – these are the self-promoting ones, full of pictures of my 15 year old son stopping penalty kicks or making spectacular saves. The transactional ones are in response to friends and colleagues post, either re-tweet or sharing of posts (or wishing someone happy birthday). I do use twitter to post stuff useful things that I see to my classes.
My web posts, whether on my personal site or on course sites, are pedagogical – I don’t expect people to ‘interact’ with them (and I’ve shut comments off); I do expect students and others out there to read them (and since last year, I’ve been using hypothes.is to have students annotate weekly, instead of submitting response papers). So maybe I’m not using social media optimally, and really just use it to lurk on other people’s messages.
What I do use most are Feedly and Listservs. I get most of my information, and ideas of things to look for, from these two Web 1.0 technologies.
More later …
I don’t think there is any right way of using social media. I do push back against the idea that it is not real life and that there aren’t ways to connect and have meaningful interactions. I’ve noticed that people who actively use social media to interact have had or have a specific need to do so. I think Laurian talked about this some in her post Echo Chambers. “On Twitter, I have expanded my networks to include conversations with people I don’t know in real life, but who affirm the importance of civic engagement and social justice. This way of connecting to people through daisy-chained associations and shared commitments allows me to feel less isolated, less vulnerable and less afraid as a person who lives on multiple margins.” (https://digpins.inkandbolts.com/category/week-2-posts/)
Do you see any need in giving opportunities to students to explore finding value in online interactions?
Fuji, I to build the capacity to use social media in the pedagogical way you do–it saves trees, is easily amended to reflect the changes in the classroom and brings a clarity to your expectations of students in a way that I think is really useful for students who actually look at the content. It might actually be optimal in that it forces students to think about social media beyond its sociality
…that cartoon is gold. Reminds me of the Savage Minds/Anthrodendum tweet up at AAA in 2015.