SNAPP is a software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies. The network visualisations of forum interactions provide an opportunity for teachers to rapidly identify patterns of user behaviour – at any stage of course progression. SNAPP has been developed to extract all user interactions from various commercial and open source learning management systems (LMS) such as BlackBoard (including the former WebCT), and Moodle. SNAPP is compatible for both Mac and PC users and operates in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
This post provides an annotated bibliography of some work on using social media (in particular Facebook) as a pre-registration/pre-university/induction tool. The references given can also be found at my Delicious site. Some examples of the use of Facebook for induction purposes are given at the end.
The recently released ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology gives some excellent insights into trends in college students' technology ownership, perceptions, skills, and habits.
"For adoption of new technologies in science, it has to be an order of magnitude more useful than current tools. We just don’t have the time to waste learning new tools that only marginally increase our productivity." Discussion: http://friendfeed.com/science-2-0/bceaea67/scientists-still-not-joining-social-networks
A few bit.ly users who also heavily use Delicious and Twitter have asked for an easier way to sync all these services. We recently came up with a pretty good way to automate this sync process using Twitterfeed.
Agna is a freeware application designed for social network analysis, sociometry and sequential analysis. Platform-independent, friendly and easy-to-learn, integrated visual network editor, html output, free.
BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes which extends WordPress MU and brings social networking features to a new or existing installation.
The Social Media Classroom is a new project started by Howard Rheingold which offers an open-source Drupal-based web service to teachers and students for the purpose of introducing social media into the classroom. The service includes tools like forums, blogs, wikis, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets, video conferencing, and more.