Social sharing

Sharing on social media (Source: Geralt, goo.gl/z1G5zE, under CC0 Public Domain licence)

Social sharing services are classic web 2.0 tools which allow users to share and comment on multimedia materials. All major social sharing platforms have app versions for mobile devices, allowing them to be integrated into mobile learning, and there are a number of mobile-first or mobile-only social sharing services which introduce a geolocation or geosocial networking element to this kind of sharing.

Social sharing services, many of which have important educational and/or professional uses, facilitate the sharing of user-generated content (UGC) in the form of text, audio, photos, slides, videos or other multimedia creations. Most of these services allow you to make your materials either public or private, though there may be a cost attached to the latter. Despite the apparent specialisation of these services (with a focus on text, or photos, etc) many of them, including textsharing services, in fact host multimedia documents and artefacts. Social sharing services typically offer space for commentary on the documents and artefacts being shared, as well as encouraging users to connect with each other and network around the shared content. As such, social sharing services are in some senses a subset of social networking services. Note that social sharing services differ somewhat from document sharing applications such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, which may be used to store and transfer personal files, or to share them with a limited number of contacts, but which are not intended for wider public sharing.

Social sharing services can offer a number of pedagogical advantages. They provide access to many potentially useful multimedia resources, some of which are available under Creative Commons (CC) licences, meaning that they can generally be freely used by teachers and students. It is also possible for educators to share their own materials on these services. The greatest pedagogical advantages are however to be found by moving further in a web 2.0 direction, where students post their own educational UGC, sharing this content with and receiving feedback on it from class peers (via private channels) or from the wider internet (via public channels). In this way, students can develop 21st century skills of communication and collaboration, linked to digital literacies, as they build their knowledge and understanding in a whole variety of subject areas.

Social sharing services can also offer technological advantages. While many of today’s website, blog and wiki platforms provide inbuilt widgets for sharing multiple media, there may sometimes be advantages in storing multimedia materials on dedicated social sharing services. Firstly, you don’t use up your storage capacity on your own website, blog or wiki; and secondly, you can obtain embed codes provided by the social sharing service so that you can embed your stored documents and artefacts directly into your website, blog or wiki, and view, play and/or interact with them there. For example, the embed code for a YouTube video can be obtained by clicking the Share tab and then the Embed icon beneath the video screen; the screen capture below shows how the embed code can be obtained for the Common Craft video Social Media in Plain English. Once you have copied the embed code, you simply paste it into your website, blog or wiki, using a widget, gadget or multimedia function.

Embed code for the video ‘Social Media in Plain English’ (Source: Common Craft, YouTube, goo.gl/BnwsTQ)

As with a number of other web 2.0 tools, the main risks for students are a lack of privacy (linked in part to corporate surveillance) and inappropriate feedback. To avoid problems, private channels can be set up on social sharing services and made visible only to class members; or, in the case of public channels, students can be warned not to show their faces or include identifying information. It is also important to take into consideration copyright law, especially when it comes to reusing and sharing images. In addition to educational exemptions allowed in many legal systems, teachers and students can make use of Creative Commons materials, which can generally be freely used for educational purposes (subject to licencing conditions, such as the need to include an attribution).

Some well-known examples of social sharing services, each with its own variations, are listed below. Related services may also be found on the data visualisation, digital storytelling, podcasting and videos pages of this website.

Textsharing and related services include Box for document sharing and embedding. E-books often allow annotations, which may be shared; this can be seen for example with the Amazon Kindle service. Services that permit annotating and commenting on texts, books, and other artefacts include Edji, Glose, Kami, Now Comment and  SocialBook; Diigo allows annotating and commenting on webpages. cK-12 offers free, customisable textbooks, with teachers able to create their own content; FlatWorld is a similar paid service. Teachers Pay Teachers facilitates paid sharing of educational resources. Both teachers and students can also publish their own content through flipbook services like Flipsnack, with more sophisticated publication options including Apple Pages and Kindle Create. For more options (including more flipbook services), see the digital storytelling page of this website.

Audiosharing and related services include podcasting-related services such as AudioBoom; for more options, see the podcasting page of this website. Forvo allows sharing of pronunciations of words in different languages.

Photosharing and related services include Flickr, Photobucket and the mobile-first Instagram, as well as Pinterest with its visual pin-up boards. Platforms such as Flickr, Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons are good sources of Creative Commons (CC) images which can be used by teachers and students; the easiest way to find such images is to through the Openverse CC search engine. Of course, teachers and students can share their own materials through many photosharing services. Perhaps the best-known graphic design service is Canva, which offers many free graphic design and infographic templates. Services for creating photo slideshows or collages include Bannersnack and Fotonea. For more options (especially for infographics), see the data visualisation page of this website.

Slidesharing and related services include Prezi and SlideShare.

For videosharing and related services, see the videos page of this website.

Multimedia sharing and related services include those listed in alphabetical order below, some of which are general purpose platforms, and some of which are designed specifically with education in mind.