60+Social+Media

What is Social Media?

Affiloramadefines social media in the following way.

//Social media is content created and shared by individuals on the web using freely available websites that allow users to create and post their own images, video and text information and then share that with either the entire internet or just a select group of friends. It is one of the most rapidly growing segments of the web and is changing the way people communicate with their friends.//

Interactions with social media are often stimulated through graphic links such as the following.






 * What are some of the most popular social media sites?**

FaceBook Twitter LinkedIn Yammer YouTube Pinterest Four Square My Space Plaxo Google +


 * Why is Social Media important to E-learning?**

Social media is extremely relevant to the execution of e-learning resources for many reasons, including the following.
 * 1) Use of social media can be part of your e-learning resource. For example, if part of your e-learning resource is a requirement for your participants to engage in discussion and conversation then in preference to creating a tool to facilitate this you could alternatively establish a group in FaceBook or Yammer to provide this infrastructure. Why should we unnecessarily re-invent the wheel?
 * 2) Providing easy access to social media enables the users of the e-learning resource to maintain connectivity with their friends and the world without having to abandon the resource. This is valuable to many users of e-learning resources, especially because people who choose to participate in e-learning are more likely to be persistent active users of social media. By facilitating this easy access to social media it encourages participants to more enthusiastically engage with the e-learning resource.
 * 3) Providing easy access to social media provides improved opportunities for the users of the e-learning resource to positively promote the resource, which is often important to the developers, especially if the resource is a commercially motivated product.