Social Web for Research and Fun  Tags: scholarly_communication social_web social_justice ict_literacy scholarly_publishing  

Each page offers some resources from the "7 things you should know about" Series at Educause, and CommonCraft Show Videos that offer "Plain English" explanations of Social Web tools. Below is a feed of the most recent "things you should know" about technologies in education.

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Hallmarks

Ease of web-based content creation: Wikis, Blogs, Photoalbums, Music
Ease of web-based distribution: RSS / subscription: Text, Podcasts, Videocasts
Ease of communication among self-selected members: Networks, Sharing
Participation in discovery: Tagging, Bookmarking
Participation in editing/updating resources: Comments & Feedback mechanisms

Import for all Disciplines:

• The rapid development in the Social Web's Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) has in impact on the way information is created, distributed, cited, stored, archived, repurposed; it also has impact on privacy, legal and educational issues in all disciplines; thereby compunding Information Literacy issues with ICT Literacy issues.
• Specific development in the process of Scholarly Communication and Open Access movements

Import for Social Justice Mission

• Impact of Free and OpenSource software facilitates information access and sharing
• Open Publishing and Open Access movements facilitate scholarly research and publications from underrepresented scholars
• Lack of ICT literacy compounds problems for people who need information most
• Social contribution of data for GIS mapping of information from all disciplines, but especially data on poverty, need and environmental impacts

Caveat User:

PRIVACY: The technologies which facilitate the greatest benefits of Social Web and Network sites may also facilitate the biggest problems of privacy and copyright violations. The more information a user posts, and the more applications the user employs to network their resources (e.g.: Flickr to blog, twitter to iPhone) the less control the user may have over who can store and re-use the posted, shared information. Take the time to research the privacy settings and the copyright and licensing policies of any social-web applications.

ACCURACY:  Because data and information can be published, captured, re-displayed, re-tweeted and indexed through web-spiders very quickly, it is important to evaluate the accuracy of information found on any internet-based site: can you find the "original" author/poster of the information? is that person or organization reliable? Rumor, dis-information and mis-information travel as quickly as breaking news in a web 2.0 world!

COPYRIGHT: Be mindful when downloading, embedding, linking-to or re-mixing any materials obtained from Social Web Sites; many materials may be protected by Copyright and licensing agreements, and have restrictions on "proper" use. For example, one should be careful about linking-to or embedding resources that you know (or have reason to believe) contain audio or video which has been illegally posted by others. "Put more plainly, if someone else pirated something and posted it to YouTube, you should not send your students [or friends or "followers"] to it. That can be a form of copyright infringement called 'contributory infringement' " (Linda Enghagen - Copyright Course Discussion Board, Friday, November 6, 2009).

For an overview of how Social Media is currently being used in various disciplines, Online Database of Social Media Policies offers a wide variety of guidelines and terms of use compiled from diverse sources/industries.