Using Social Media in Religious Education by Will Kahn-Greene is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at bluesock.org.
The following sites can be demoed. If you plan to do demos on any of them, you’ll need to set up an account there first. Setting up an account often takes time–it’s not something you can do during the demo.
If you plan to do demos of these systems, then you need to have them installed on a server you own or control:
If you’re planning to do slides, you’ll need to set them up for Present sections and anything else you want to cover.
Present
There’s a lot to go through. We can skip through things we’re not interested in. There’s no need to cover all the material, but there is a need to cover the material you’re interested in.
We’re going to cover blogs, feeds, copyright, licensing, podcasts, microblogs, photo sharing, and social networking.
(30 minutes)
Present
Let’s talk about blogs.
The word “blog” is short for web log–it’s a log, like a diary or a journal, that’s published on the web.
Every blog consists of a series of entries that are sorted by time–so the most recent entry is shown on the front page of the blog.
The blogs of your peers is a rich resource of knowledge and experience. It also allows you to get a feel for what’s happening right now. Following those blogs is just like reading the newspaper: you can bookmark articles that are interesting, you can more easily keep in touch with people, and you can keep track of current events.
If you haven’t started a blog, you should. It’s a great way to process and frame your world, journal your thoughts, and share what’s working for you.
Every blog also has a feed. There are several different formats for feeds, but all feed formats are well-defined and are used for syndication.
For example, you have a blog. You’re the author of your blog. The title of your blog is “Purple flowers” because in this blog you write entries about purple flowers you take pictures of in your travels. Your blog currently consists of two entries. Each entry has a title, a body, and a date that it was published.
Title: Purple Flowers
Author: You
Entry:
Title: Behind my house
Date: 7/7/2010
Body: I saw a tiny purple flower behind my house. I'm not
sure what plant it is, but it sure is very pretty.
Entry:
Title: At my mom's
Date: 7/2/2010
Body: I was at my mom's house dropping off a load of mulch
when I noticed the irises were blooming. They're a lovely
shade of purple.
That’s the data we have in our example blog. An RSS 2.0 feed for this blog could look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>Purple Flowers</title>
<managingEditor>You</managingEditor>
<item>
<title>Behind my house</title>
<pubDate>Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:00 GMT</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[
I saw a tiny purple flower behind my house. I'm not
sure what plant it is, but it sure is very pretty.
]]></description>
</item>
<item>
<title>At my mom's</title>
<pubDate>Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:00 GMT</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[
I was at my mom's house dropping off a load of mulch
when I noticed the irises were blooming. They're a lovely
shade of purple.
]]></description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
Feeds aren’t meant to be read and written by people–they’re meant to be read and written by software. Their purpose is to be a well-defined format of the data that’s easily parseable by software.
Feeds solve the problem of following multiple blogs. Instead of going to every web-site for every blog you follow to see if there are new entries, you would use an application called a feed reader. You subscribe to the feeds of the blogs that you want to follow in your feed reader. Then your feed reader automatically shows any new entries when there are new entries. Thus instead of going to 20 sites, you open up your feed reader and it shows the entries you haven’t seen, yet.
(10 minutes)
If you’re using a projector or monitor or something like that, go through some blogs with the participants. Two good examples are:
Show the blog, navigating through the blog, and then the feed.
Then show how to add the feed to Google Reader (or any feed reader) and what it looks like in the reader.
(10 minutes)
Ask the participants if they want to see a demo of WordPress. If so, do a WordPress demo here.
Present
There’s a lot of blog software, systems and services out there. We’re going to talk about two of them because they’re both very popular, free, easy to use, and provide a variety of features.
The first is WordPress.
The demo should consist of something along the lines of:
(10 minutes)
Ask the participants if they want to see a demo of Blogger. If so, do a Blogger demo here.
The demo should consist of something along the lines of:
Present
Most countries in the world have a series of laws that establish something called “copyright” [1]. The idea behind copyright is that someone who creates a work reserves a series of rights to that work.
For example:
Be aware and vigilant about the content that you’re using.
How do you know whether something is copyrighted? In general, anything that is created is implicitly protected under copyright regardless of whether a copyright statement is visible.
How can you work with copyrighted works?
If you know that the content is in the Public Domain [2], then you can use it because it’s no longer protected by copyright. Something is in the Public Domain if the person who created it explicitly puts it in the Public Domain or if the copyright has expired.
You can ask for permission from the content creator before you use the work.
You can use the work in a way that’s supported by Fair Use. This is definitely possible with text, but difficult with audio and video since the laws surounding fair use for those kinds of things is less clear.
You can use works licensed under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a nonprofit that built a framework of licenses that easily allow content creators to license their work in a way that permits sharing, remixing, and derivative works.
By licensing the work with a Creative Commons license, the creator has already given you permission to use it with specified restrictions.
The UUA maintains resources related to copyright [3].
The EFF maintains courseware about teaching copyright [4] and information about intellection property issues [5].
Additionally, the U.S. Copyright office has a lot of material online [6].
| [1] | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright |
| [2] | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain |
| [3] | http://uua.org/spirituallife/worshipweb/143066.shtml |
| [4] | http://www.teachingcopyright.org/ |
| [5] | http://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property |
| [6] | http://copyright.gov/ |
Present
If you’re keeping a blog, help your readers by writing up a set of expectations that answers the following questions:
You can write the answers to these questions on an About page. Make sure to check this page every now and then and make sure that you’re keeping up with the expectations you’ve set.
FIXME - I think the UUA has a comment moderation policy that can be used–need to add link here.
If your workshop lasts several days, it’s a good idea to have participants create blogs on WordPress and write one or more blog entries for each day. At the start of the next day of the workshop, one person can present his/her blog entry. Encourage participants to experiment with features and read each other’s entries.
If you’re planning to do that, then this is a good time to have everyone set up a WordPress account if they don’t already have a blog account somewhere.
Present
You’ve seen a blog already. All blogs have feeds.
Podcasts are a special kind of blog that additionally has audio or video content associated with each entry. Instead of reading the blog like you would a diary, you watch or listen to it like you would watch a news program or listen to a radio show.
You can use WordPress to set up an audio podcast. You write a new blog entry and in that blog entry create a link to an audio file you have hosted somewhere on the Internet.
If you use the free WordPress account, it doesn’t automatically create enclosures for media items in the post. One way to deal with this is to set up the feed in FeedBurner which will look at the feed from your blog, see the media items, add the appropriate enclosures, and thus create a new feed. You would give the FeedBurner version of the feed out to people.
If you’re creating a video podcast, you can use WordPress and host your videos on blip.tv or archive.org.
You can put videos on YouTube, but YouTube feeds don’t have enclosures, so your viewers will be restricted to watching the videos on the YouTube web-site and through systems that YouTube has licensed.
FIXME - Shelby mentioned using Podbean for audio podcasts.
We’re going to demo an audio podcast using WordPress and FeedBurner:
(15 minutes)
Present
A microblog is like a blog, but posts are very short thoughts: a link, an image, a video, a bumper sticker, a quote and so on.
A microblog is raw and unpolished. If you look at posts on Twitter (otherwise known as tweets), you’ll see reactions, short statements, status updates, and other chatter.
Additionally, microblog systems like Twitter and Identi.ca, connect people. You subscribe to other people’s microblogs and they subscribe to yours. Your account will have a feed of all the posts from all the people you subscribe to. You can follow the people and other entities that you’re interested in.
Most microblogging systems restrict you to 140 character posts. The reason for this is that it allows you to post from any cellphone that can send SMS messages.
Microblog services have APIs that allow developers to build programs that enhance the microblogging experience. For example, Twitter and Identi.ca have APIs and that allows developers to write applications that allow you to follow your subscriptions and create new posts from your iPhone or an Android-based phone.
Every account on a microblog service also has a feed. You can incorporate this feed into your web-site.
(10 minutes)
If you have a Twitter account, you can do this there. If you have an Identi.ca account, you can do this there.
(10 minutes)
Present
There are several photo sharing sites on the Internet. Like other social media sites, you can post your content, other people can subscribe to feeds, and you can connect with friends.
Flickr is a great photo sharing site that is working with Creative Commons to make it easier for its users to license their works with Creative Commons licenses. This is a great resource for photos and images.
Show how to post photos to flickr.
Present
Flickr is a great resource for Creative Commons licensed photos and images.
Think of an event that’s happened in the last year or a place that you would like to go to. Go to the Flickr site [7], run a few searches, and look at the pictures that come up. Pick a picture to present to the other participants that is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribute license (anything that starts with CC-BY).
CC-BY license allows you to print the picture out and use it in a classroom, use it during a chapel service, use it in a blog post, send it in a newsletter, copy it, share it with friends, and so forth as long as you attribute the creator.
Go around in a circle. Each person should specify what they were looking for and a picture that they found.
| [7] | http://flickr.com/ |
Present
We’ve talked about a lot of social media sites and services that allow you to communicate. Let’s talk about organizational problems in our programs that using these social media sites and services could help.
Discuss as a group the communication tools we covered.
Spend 10 minutes to about their properties and what kinds of things they could make easier in a program.
When the conversation peters out, bring up one of the following:
announcements
How can you use social media for news-types of announcements? How do you integrate the system into your program to make it useful for announcements?
maintaining history
How can you use social media for maintaining the history of your program? New volunteers, volunteers that have stepped aside, changes in the program, changes in the size or scope of the program, and so on? What other kinds of things would you want to keep track of over a period of time?
sharing events with people who aren’t there
How can you use social media to share events with people who weren’t able to make it? Concerts, plays, workshops, meetings–what other kinds of events can you share?
training
Which tools will make training volunteers easier? It’s something we spend a lot of time on–would these tools alleviate some of that work? Video podcasting might help a lot. Once you make the videos, putting them online in a video podcast and putting them on a DVD are both possibilities and will allow you to reach a large group of people.
getting feedback
Which tools will make it easier to solicit anonymous and non-anonymous feedback from volunteers and participants in our program?
tools that require accounts vs. tools that don’t
Blogging tools require accounts for anyone who’s blogging. Microblogging tools require accounts for anyone who is microblogging. Facebook requires an account to participate.
Blogging, microblogging, Flickr and podcasting don’t require accounts for people who are reading the blog and microblog, looking at the photos, and listening or watching the podcast.
If people mention things that aren’t on the list, work with that, make a note of it, and send it to me for feedback.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s collection of information on blogger’s rights. There’s a lot of legalese-like things here and it’s focused mostly on bloggers as journalists. However, it’s a great resource for the legal side of things and they’ve created a Blogger’s Legal Guide which covers fair use and copyright issues.
Creative Commons is a non-profit which provides legal frameworks and tools allowing you to easily share the work you’re creating with others in a way that legally allows them to use it, remix it, and create derivatives of it.
Many content creators license their works under Creative Commons licenses.
Social networking¶
(30 minutes)
Present
Social networking sites allow you to connect to others and in this way send messages to large groups of interconnected people without having to deal with mailing lists and other subscription-based systems.
They also allow you to keep track of people in your network.
In many ways they combine the social aspects of a lot of the things we’ve talked about today already into one big application. This makes it easier for people because all their tasks are under one roof rather than spread out across a bunch of different accounts.
Because of this, these are great resources for tapping into communities and networks. This makes it easier to do announcements, PR, marketing, and other things of that nature.
FIXME - Shelby is going to cover this in her presentation
FIXME - The UUA has a behavior policy that can be used.
Facebook, Elgg