S

Glossary of 'Social Software' terms in education

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Sharpcast

Definition: A desktop photo-organizer, which also allows you to 'synch' your photos across many pcs and the web in a simple, quick way. You can also create, share and comment on photo albums. Unlike flickr, you do not need to upload your photos to the site. Instead, loading them onto your pc will result in them being automatically 'synched' onto your Sharpcast site. You can even 'synch' photos from some mobile phones! Also includes some photo-editing tools...edit a photo on your hard drive, save the changes and those changes are automatically applied to all 'synched' copies of that image.  You can share albums with friends by dragging them onto your friend's e-mail address in your contact list and with group albums any number of people can contribute photos.

Also available is an upload onlyplug-in for iPhoto for those who use Macs, so no synch, desk-top organiser and the other functionality outlined above...but if you use a MAC at home and a PC at work, you can access your photos on both.

Use in Education:Could be used by Champs to share images for use in courses (?) or as a way of students on field-trips sharing their photos with others whilst still out in the field. The ability to have several users commenting on a given picture via an in-built chat facility looks useful for this sort of activity.

Link to Example: Uploaded  a bunch of images from home from a mac, took about 25 minutes due to number and size (chose not to restrict them and wanted to se how long it would take to batch upload a lot of images at once...as this is what many people would do when first using this -  it took 15 secs for 350Kb image over 1mbs broadband). Created a group album of images of the Lake District. Have sent e-mail to champs list to share the Group Album...not sure if you will be able to view it, however, as I used the champs e-mail address rather than individual ones!!

Social Bookmarking

Definition: Refers to websites where users can set up an area to store their favourite sites, organised by topic, and also see which sites on that topic have been stored by others. Sites are ranked by popularity, often a good indicator of their quality.

Use in Education: Use unique keywords (tags) to store sites you want students to use to research a topic, and / or enable them to add their own to encourage collaborative learning;. You can also store sites you have no need for now but may need in the future, and either tutor or students can search for sites tagged by others. Helpful way of storing your favourites for teachers and learners who are not always working at the same machine.

Link to Example: The sites most often demonstrated in education are probably del.icio.us and Reddit.com/

Social Networking

Definition: Overwrite definition here

Use in Education: Overwrite use here

Link to Example: Overwrite link here

StumbleUpon

Definition: A  tool that automatically feeds you links to websites that are similar in content to the one you are viewing when you click on the stumbleupon icon in your browser. You will need to register with the site and then download and install the tool before you can use it.

Use in Education: Useful for widening the range of sites related to a particular topic, but you have no control over which sites it suggests.

Link to Example: Cannot provide example at the moment, because cannot download it at work :-(  Will add one later from home.

Now installed StumbleUpon toolbar, checked photography as one of my interests and was taken to this site: timelapse.swf move your mouse across the image to view it at different times of the day.