Sharing what you are reading, watching or thinking is a great way to connect with other people online, but you can also share presentations, lecture videos and academic papers by having public facing web content.
bCourses announcements and discussions
In bCourses you can post an announcement, assignment, reading or share an article and by default an email is sent out to your class. You have the option to notify students right away or delay your posting, but keep in mind that when you “Save” your announcement it will send out the notification. Creating an announcement is a quick way to contact all your students at once.Another option to share articles is to create a discussion forum in bCourses. In discussion forums you and your students can share and comment on articles and resources that they discover online. This is great way to prompt discussions outside of the classroom and share information.
Sharing with Twitter
A tweet is a 140 character message that is sent out to people that “follow” you. Creating a twitter feed for your class can make it easy for both you and your students to post links and images in one location. You can make your Twitter feed public too, so you can share what you are reading and your opinions with other colleagues.
Twitter is also a powerful tool at spreading information. Today, we hear about how it has been used to organize protests and report on important news. Twitter is also useful to tracking the sentiments of millions of people, by checking what topics are being spoken about the most online.
Using social media
Facebook represents a huge community and most students already have accounts. Using Facebook to communicate with students provides a way to share information, articles, images or videos online. Sharing content online can become a starting point for out of class conversations. It also is a great way to share topics and content that may not be class specific. Learning how to tailor Facebook’s privacy settings to separate your personal and academic relationships is an important step in the process.
Using a blog
Blogs are entirely public and provide a way to share articles, images and your writing on various topics. Many people avoid blogs because they see them as personal diaries displayed online, but really the professionalism and quality of writing is up to you. Many blogs cover engaging academic topics and are written like published journal articles. Blogs are easier to update than a website and often free, so they are used by many people to share with their peers.
Sharing on a UC Berkeley faculty profile page
Faculty profiles are public webpages that you can link articles, your CV and a biography.
