Until recently, I divided my Social Media platforms into two groups, my personal networks and my professional networks. Facebook has connected me with friends and Twitter has connected me with fellow educators. However, the lines are blurring and I'm not sure that I like it. Facebook was once my downtime - but it too has become a forum for professional connections, even the official platform for a postgraduate course. Given the potential to glean professional learning from Facebook and Twitter, it is with interest I continue my quest by searching Social Media.
Pre-Search
Before I started any re-search, I established my prior knowledge about Social Media platforms. With teenage children, I thought I was quite in tune. I could easily name six different platforms that I have used personally (a few just to keep track of my children!)
Search Tip
Using the Google Search engine, the search term define followed by a key word or phrase will produce a definition in the search results.
Social Media: "The collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.(WhatIs.com) Several of the key words in the definition of Social Media resonate with my growing understanding of inquiry learning, most obviously collaboration. Rather quickly, my initial six forms of Social Media seemed paltry and were dwarfed by the ever expanding Social Media beast, as depicted in 'The Conversation Prism' pictured below. For the purposes of manageable re-searching using Social Media, I will be selective in the platforms I use. YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing website, created in 2005. What did we ever do before YouTube? I hadn't considered YouTube as Social Media, but it is an online communication channel that allows content sharing and interaction. Many people have their own YouTube channel, even me! YouTube is frequently used as a source of information, where tutorials can be found on just about anything.
My re-search focus was How can broad themes and big ideas be incorporated in the design of inquiry learning? I included the search term "concept based learning" because of my own professional context at an International Baccalaureate school, where big ideas are framed through a conceptual lens.
"Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues." (WhatIs.com)
I "liked" one of the Facebook pages (so far) and I look forward to posts from the Inquiry Based Learning and Teaching page appearing on my Facebook newsfeed.
Storify - curating Social Media
Storify is a social network service that allows people to create stories by curating posts from social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I have used Storify to collect a sample of tweets about inquiry learning.
Twitter Storify Tips
Within Storify there are options to search many different Social Media feeds to select content for a Storify story. I decided to focus on Twitter. Given my prior knowledge about how hashtags work in Twitter, to group tweets, I presumed using a # would provide me with results pertaining to inquiry learning. I attempted the search #inquirylearning and compared it to the search inquiry learning. I gained a similar quantity but differing results. Many of the results did not inform my understanding of inquiry learning, as they were things such as photographs of people presenting about inquiry learning. The most useful tweets often contained links to websites. I then discovered an option to refine the Storify search according to type of tweet (all, tweets with link, tweets with media). I selected 'tweets with link' and this produced a wealth of tweets that directed me all over the web, uncovering many different, mostly relevant resources. Results can be viewed using this link to the Story produced using Storify, or they are displayed below.
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Louise CullenInquirer Archives
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