Transmedia Time: social technology

One of the keys to transmedia is involvement. From collaboration to social interaction, young people enjoy connecting with others. Look for ways to involve young people in sharing.

Let's explore ways that social technology can be used as part of a transmedia project as students post, participate, social profile, and social mashup.

POST

Involve students in projects where they can easily post their work and collaborate with others. Wikispaces is a great tool for these types of projects because students can also discuss the pages.

Wikispaces Project Ideas

Participate

Increasingly, websites are asking for people to participate.

The Aliens Among Us project contains information and stories about "alien" plants and animals. It also asks people to report sightings.

The Did You Feel It? earthquake site asks students to report their sightings.

How could you have people participate in a local project? For instance, you could ask people to add to a HistoryPin project. Or, join Journey North.

Social PROFILE

Focus on people and social networking.

Creating fictional characters in a social media setting is a popular project. However before jumping into this type of project we can learn a lesson from a librarian at the University of Nevada at Reno. She brought two students from school history "back to life" through Facebook. However she found out the creating false profile was not permitted under the Terms of Use. Instead, she created PAGES for the students which was permissible. Read Facebook Deletes University's History Project for Violating Social Network's Rules. The project is now back online as the Joe McDonald page, the Leola Lewis page, and Jimmie Curtin page. You can also LIKE the Special Collection.

These type of fictional facebook pages are common in young adult literature.

If you want to use a system other than Facebook to create a fake profile for a class, go to MyFakeWall. Check out Cinderella and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

You can also use Google Docs Templates. Check out the Historical Facebook Lesson by Derrick Waddell.''

Use a tool like Edmodo for a closed environment for exploring social networks and profiles.

SOCIAL MASHUPS

Look for mashups that combine social media tools for complex messages. For instance, Conflict History explores history by combining maps and timelines.