Social media: Educational tools in disguise

A lot of us spend more time on social networking sites than engaging in any academic work. Today, learning involves keeping pace with the trends, networking with the right people and building knowledge and skills in areas of interest. The good news is that you can find all this in the social networks. Let us look at a few options, which are great learning portals in disguise.

LinkedIn

A business-related social networking site, it helps you get in touch with communities, gain relevant knowledge, grow your professional network and start building your profile. For example, if you are interested in renewable energy, you can join the Green or Renewable Energy Network. You can contribute to an existing discussion or start your own topic on LinkedIn. You can even find internship opportunities here.

LinkedIn Today is a great feature wherein you get to read the most popular stories and articles from leading news sources across the world on various topics. A fantastic tool to keep up with the trends.

Twitter

Twitter is like the ultimate university where you can get the best insights and knowledge on any subject in the world. The best way to make use of Twitter is by following the right people and lists based on your interests.

For instance, if you’re an aspiring mediaperson, you’d better get on the back of Professor Jay Rosen (@palafo), a professor of NYU School of Journalism, who offers insightful commentary and advice on topics related to journalism and new media. If you are a science geek, go after Andrew Maynard (@2020science), a scientist who tweets about all the good stuff on his blog that you don’t get anywhere else! These are just a few examples. The who’s who of the world are now on Twitter. Listorious.com is a site that will help you find the right people and lists to follow on Twitter based on your interests.

Aditya Vasan from KCG College of Technology, Chennai, opines, “Twitter gives me a good chance to improve my knowledge and learn a lot as I follow people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, who tweet about things that are really worth reading. I follow TED talks and used to browse through Steve Jobs pages, which give me access to good videos that inspire and help me improve my presentation skills”.

Facebook

Facebook needs no introduction but here are some pointers on how you can use it better. Look out for relevant pages of organisations, products, communities or causes based on your career interests which give you information about opportunities, news, high-quality articles and other resourceful content as feeds on your wall. If you are an aspiring layer, MyLaw.net, a community of layers, would be of great interest. For the geeks, there is TechCrunch that gives the latest buzz in the tech world.

Gopi Krishna, from Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai, says, “As I’m interested in entrepreneurship, I use Facebook to follow pages like National Entrepreneurship Network and National Social Entrepreneurship Forum and The Startup Centre, where I get to know about a lot of opportunities that I can participate in”

Facebook has recently introduced apps for the timeline. Branchout is an app for professional networking and jobs. Digg and Washington Post Social Reader are widely subscribed news apps. Words with Friends is a word game that you can play to improve your vocabulary. You can also subscribe to your favourite journalists, political figures, professors or other experts and get their public wall posts as feeds on your wall

Rahul.prabhakar28@gmail.com