Week 3 Assignment1: Educational Technologies Blog

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY BLOG                                                                                    

          Social networks are internet websites set up to allow people to connect and communicate with people and information within their own sphere and across the world.  Social networking is an excellent tool to use in the adult learning environment for it opens the opportunity for teachers/trainers to connect with other teachers/trainers to form their own educative social community.  It allows students/employees to connect and form educative social communities with other students/employees.  Social networks have the capability for educators to bring their network into the classroom and personalize them to the context of their own students and the curriculum and/or course under study (Richardson, 2010, p. 133).  Social network systems make it possible to collaborate, do good work with others, and learn a great deal in the process.

          Ning.com is a social networking site, established in 2005, that allows users to create and customize their own social website and build their own social community that communicates through forums, chats, and activities streams (Richardson, 2010, p. 140).  Ning allows members to share photos, videos, and blogs.  Ning houses a built-in integration with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that makes it possible to increase and maximize membership reach.  Ning is a free social network system.  It can be upgraded at a cost to add special features and functions, such as live videos, Ustream TV, photo stickers, Aviary effects, and Constant Contact email marketing.  Trainers can use Ning to form social network communities with other trainers within their own community and across the world to collaborate, share, and build knowledge and skills on ideas and methods they use that are successful in employee training.  The trainers can share technologies they use and those that are new and emerging to incorporate in training to make it more interactive and engaging.  Enrollment Advisors and Academic Advisors can use Ning with their new and existing students  to form specialized social networks to discuss things they need to do, course updates, grades, class registrations, book ordering, and much more.  By staying in contact with their students through Ning, the advisors are able to aid in student success and continued enrollment for degree completion.
http://www.ning.com

           The iPhone 5 is a social networking phone that allows users access to a multitude of functions, features, and options all in one phone.  A new feature the iPhone 5 has is FaceTime.  FaceTime on the iPhone 5 allows users to connect and communicate face-to-face to another iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Wi-Fi, or cellular connection.  Video calls can be made right from the start of the call or added during the call.  Calling groups can communicate via video on the FaceTime iPhone 5 from the beginning of the group call, as well as join while the video call is in process.  If members of your group miss the call altogether, you can record, save, and email the video to them as an email attach, all in one function.  They can then download and watch the video call at their own time.  This is a great social networking tool for trainers to use to train employees at different sites to create a live, interactive training class.  The trainer can send the training class video to employees that were not able to attend the class when it first aired.  This ability saves the organization travel expenses, time of the trainer and employees, and repetition for the trainer to train absent employees.  Cross-site meetings can be conducted face-to-face, so attendants can see the faces of those they are meeting with, to make the meeting more personable and inclusive for all involved, and provide immediacy in sharing ideas and answering questions.  This ability allows for enhanced collaboration trainers and/or advisors have with trainers and/or advisors from different site areas they are assigned to work with on a specific project.

http://www.apple.com/iphone
                                                                    Reference

Richardson, W. (2010).  Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3^rd ed.).  (pp. 133, 140).  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.