Facebook groups for publicity of events

From Blogger Pictures

Pathik Pathak in Crucible has recently been running a series of session entitled "Talking Allowed", which are in the format of a panel discussion on current issues. He chose to use Twitter and facebook to publicise the event and one of the most important elements of this strategy was the facebook group.

Students are informed of upcoming events and, with the Students Union helping to spread the word too, the reach of this event and it's audience vastly increased with minimal investment through word of mouth.

Linoit for group brainstorming

Linoit is an online noteboard, which allows multiple users to post virtual post-it notes at the same time. It's free to use and once you have your account any number of people can write on your noteboard, either as logged-in users or as guests.

Andy Hoang has been using Linoit in class as a way to encourage students to talk about their experience with using interactive whiteboards. It has been really useful specifically because it appears to be informal and allows people to express their ability anonymously but in real time, thus allowing for frank discussion in class.

To set up a Linoit board like the one above

1. go to www.linoit.com and make an account. It's free to make and as far as I know it comes with no adverts. 
2. Start a new board
3. Set the settings to allow students to post as guests - this way they won't have to make accounts
4. send the address of the board to your students. In this case, as the address is quite long, I used the URL shortening service http://tr.im to shorten the address. I can then customise the shortened address too

During the lesson, to see the new entries, just refresh the browser screen by going to the refresh button in the toolbar, or pressing F5.

I've also used this to collect opinions anonymously at a distance in preparation for meetings.