Technological Resources for Faculty: Social Media

Based on active user accounts, Facebook is the largest social media company in the world. A site that allows users to access it across platforms, it is a go anywhere, access anytime virtual record of your friends, photos, and life.
While educational uses may not be the primary goal, there are ways in which it can be used to enhance the academic goals and outcomes of your class.

A virtual online catalog of ideas, pictures, and other items, Pinterest allows users to share ideas and seeks to inspire its users to go out and do things that they find on the site.
An educational use for Pinterest may include setting up an educational board for a class so that they can share ideas and pictures they find related to the topics at hand. Additionally, it is a quick, non-intrusive way for sharing of ideas and topics for discussion.

Snapchat is an image and video messaging sharing service that takes short (~6 second) videos and images and allows users to share a message or caption with others. The messages are not permanent and are deleted after the receiver looks at them.
While educational merits of Snapchat can be debated, if you would like to know how other academics use it in the classroom, you can read this blog post from The Junto.