This article by Chris Brogan details the advantages of Social Media. I’ve pared down his list to include those that most apply to education settings. However, his original list is definitely worth a read.

  • Podcasts (video and audio) encourage different types of learning, and in portable formats.
  • Social networks encourage collaboration,  and can promote non-email conversation channels.
  • Social networks can amass like-minded people around shared interest.
  • Social bookmarking means that entire groups can learn of new articles and tools.
  • Blogs and wikis encourage conversations, sharing, creation.
  • Social software, promote human-mediated information sharing.
  • Online versions of your materials and media are searchable.
  • Podcasts are a way to build intimacy with information.
  • Tagging and sharing and all the other activities common on the social Web mean that information gets passed around much faster.
  • Human aggregation and mediation improves the quality of data you find, and gives you more “exactly what I was looking for” help.
  • Innovation works much faster in a social software environment.

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