Social Media & Academia: September 2014

Web 2 For Teaching and Learning

The term social media evokes socializing in Facebook, Twitter. and other Web 2 applications. I believe this is the case with many of my colleagues. Many of them are users of Facebook and Twitter, including me, and maintain a wide network sharing ideas and interests. It is only recently that i started drawing my colleagues attention to the usefulness of the social media for teaching, learning, and related activities in the workplace.

In simple terms Web 2 is the second generation of Web 1 . Web 1 generation is where users were, and still are for many, only users of content on the Internet. Web 2 hosts the social media and allows the user to be both a user, creator, and distributor of content.

I have been learning to use Web 2 applications in the workplace for over a year. During this time i learnt to blog, use My Drive and a few other applications. I taught myself to use these application because most are easy to learn with a lot of help available now on the net. In the process i found two of my colleagues (David Decka and Julie Tum) were doing the same. We began sharing interests and skills in the use of the social media in our work routines. For example, we began sharing documents using My Drive making it easier for us to work collaboratively and share ideas quickly. David Decka is the acting systems librarian and Julie Tum is the Library Department's secretary.

An opportunity came this year for the three of us to attend training in Web 2 and Social Media for Development. The training was held for a week at NARI, Bubia, from the 26th to 30th May 2014. The focus of the course was on organization and management of information using Web 2 applications in the agriculture industry. We attended the course purposely to help us adapt the knowledge and skills in an academic environment.

On our return from the training we conducted a workshop for our colleagues in the Library to share the knowledge and skills with them. Our focus was to get our colleagues to use Web 2 application in the workplace such as sharing information with one another, with students, and other colleagues in the campus. Our small network of Web 2 applications users now is slowly increasing. Staff in the library are beginning to exchange information concerning work.

Library staff posing for a photo during Web 2 training. Photo by Julie Tum.

Recently, 17th to 18 September, 2014 we conducted a second training for a small number of lecturers and administrative staff on campus. The aim of the two day training is using web 2 applications for teaching, learning, and related work. Topics covered included Blogging, My Drive,and Dropbox,.

The photographs show some of the participants during the recent workshop conducted through TLMU at ADOC.