Social media tools are changing the education landscape. These tools tend to fall into two broad categories: those primarily intended for social networking, such as Facebook or Twitter, and those that are designed for sharing user-generated content such as blogs, YouTube, or Flickr. It is the mixture of informality and ease of updating that makes social media approaches so appealing, whether mainstream tools are used, or whether niche or local social media tools are installed or developed.

Social media tools have dramatically improved communication among professionals in education. This has occurred in the form of intense dialog through blog comment streams, as contributions to virtual gatherings like #lrnchat on Twitter, or via closed and tightly managed spaces such as Glow, the Scottish national intranet for schools that includes social media-like functionality 

Students are also keen to build their own personal networks online, and they are some of the most creative and prolific users of mainstream social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube. This gives educators and institutions a real opportunity for connecting creative enjoyable social activities with educational activities, particularly group work. Social media also provides opportunities to support students with their independent research where easy-to-access but infrequent support is required.

There are several distinct types of social media tools, although there is an increasing convergence of functionality, particularly as the largest social media sites now provide authentication and sign-up routes for an ecosystem of smaller sites. Let's consider the most relevant tools.

Learn

• #lrnchat is an online chat over Twitter for discussing learning and social media interactions.
• Glow, which includes social media-like functionality, is the Scottish national intranet for schools.
• The Princeton University Press Blog is an example of an institutional presence sharing key news items, events on campus, and research press releases.
• The Oxford Internet Institute Editor's Blog is a blog from a specific academic group or individual who share research updates or opinion in a specialist field.
• Watch the TED talk on gamification: Gabe Zichermann: How games make kids smarter.
• Visit Kim Muñoz's blog .
• The School of Visual Arts in New York uses an extremely active Facebook page to share exhibition images.
• Yale University makes their Environmental Politics and Law course available as lectures in iTunes U.
• The University of California Television Channel on YouTube EDU provides video of a range of on and off campus events, curriculum related features and materials that help anyone interested in the university explore their wider selection of YouTube EDU content such as the UCDavis Channel or UC Berkeley Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business lectures.
• The University of Edinburgh Polopoly team use a Twitter account, @uni_ed_polopoly, to feed key issues into their support page.
• The Annual Institutional Web Managers Workshops website aggregates live video streams, blogging, tweets and presentation content to provide a hub of live activity for those taking part remotely.
• A great example of their use in education is the use of FourSquare on the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus
• Read the story of Alice & Kevin, a homeless couple in Sim 3. You can also download the characters for use in your own game.
• The London School of Economics shares images from its archive collections through a Flickr Commons presence.
• The Guardian Data Blog uses Google Docs to transparently publish data used by the Guardian's journalists in their work and to share interesting openly available data sets.
• Visit the IBM developerWorks Industry Zone for all the latest industry-specific technical resources for developers.
• Shorter form audio tools for mobile such as audioBoo are also enabling innovative use of audio.
• To listen to interesting interviews and discussions for software developers, check out developerWorks podcasts.
• developerWorks technical events and webcasts: Stay current with developerWorks technical events and webcasts.

Get products and technologies

• WordPress, Blogger, Typepad and Tumblr are popular blogging tools.
• LotusLive, Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate are some real-time chat clients.
• Real-time video or audio chat tools such as Skype and Google+ Hangouts offer interesting alternatives for tutorials, supervisor meetings, or streaming short talks.
• Hootsuite or Posterous are examples of status sharing tools that also provide RSS feeds or API-driven distribution tools which enable status updates to feed into other locations.
• FriendFeed is an example of a status sharing tool that provides RSS feeds or API-driven distribution tools that enable status updates to feed into an aggregated profile.
• Many universities choose to use video tools such as Vimeo, UStream or YouTube.
• FourSquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places are the most popular location based status sharing tools at present.
• CoverItLive is a live-blogging and aggregation tool.
• Google Docs, Lotus Symphony, and Microsoft Office 365 allow easy connection between desktop software's and online editing or sharing.
• Many Eyes is an experimental social computing tool by IBM Research and the IBM Cognos software group.
• Flickr and Picassa web albums are two popular commercial image sharing sites.
• Second Life and Grockit are examples of educational social gaming environments.
• IBM Connections is social software for business that lets you access everyone in your professional network, including your colleagues, customers, and partners.

Social media can be both an effective set of tools for teaching and research and for communicating that work. Because social software is usually accessed over the web, it can reduce the need for updating local software or providing local services for specific tools or technologies. Users and learners are empowered to support each other around their own learning and on these and other technologies, which can mean that requests for support are less frequent, more specific, and better informed.

Although most social media is easy to get started with, mastering many of the most useful features requires more in-depth knowledge of that social media tool and often that of other tools, technologies, or specialist software. Therefore, social media presents an opportunity to educate motivated users in a diverse array of software and techniques. Although it can be challenging to ensure support is present (whether centrally provided or as a peer-learning space) for all levels of expertise from beginners to skilled experienced producers, support and training can help staff and students make the best of social media.

Social media can be both an effective set of tools for teaching and research and for communicating that work. Because social software is usually accessed over the web, it can reduce the need for updating local software or providing local services for specific tools or technologies. Users and learners are empowered to support each other around their own learning and on these and other technologies, which can mean that requests for support are less frequent, more specific, and better informed.

Although most social media is easy to get started with, mastering many of the most useful features requires more in-depth knowledge of that social media tool and often that of other tools, technologies, or specialist software. Therefore, social media presents an opportunity to educate motivated users in a diverse array of software and techniques. Although it can be challenging to ensure support is present (whether centrally provided or as a peer-learning space) for all levels of expertise from beginners to skilled experienced producers, support and training can help staff and students make the best of social media.