Over the last few Olympics social
media has quickly becoming more and more important in the crowd sourcing of
news, the build up and coverage of events. It’s also created a real way for
niche athletes to really help publicize themselves and their sports.
The 2012 Olympics in Vancouver is making
some good use of social media for example they have a facebook page (that
currently has 299, 163 members) and a twitter account for both the main event
(@2010tweets) and also the torch relay (@followtheflame). You can also
subscribe to up-dates by RSS and email.
But for me, where it gets really interesting is the Vancouver 2010 Students Live Initiative. This initiative has connected 24 students from across Metro Vancouver and the Sea to Sky corridor to attend sport and cultural events during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
During this time they will share they are expected to share their experiences through social media tools including facebook, video, twitter and photos. They will also be responsible for facilitating and creating an on-line student community.
It’s a great opportunity for the 24 young Canadians – but you are probably thinking, “What use is this in my classroom?”
Well, apart from student citizenship journalism being a really interesting study in its own right and that some of the social media tools mentioned above will keep you and your class right up-to-date with the latest Olympic news. The Student Live initiative also invites you and your classes (anywhere in the world) to partisiapte in their project.
Any work that you do with your class about the Winter Olympics can be part of the student live project as well.
You
can participate by doing one or more of the following things:
Go to any of the student live blogs on the site, post a comment and start a dialogue (I bet they would love to hear from international followers!)
- Tweet a message to @studentslive.
- Upload a video to YouTube and tag it 'studentslive'.
- Join the StudentsLive Facebook group and join the discussion.
- Post your photos of the work you have been doing on the Olympic and Paralympic Games to Flickr and tag them 'studentslive'.
- Send a link of a blog post you wrote related to the 2010 Winter Games to studentslive@gmail.com.
What a great and real opportunity to really expand and extend the audience of your children’s work. At the same time why not take the opportunity to speak with your class about the responsible and appropriate use of social networking sites?
Another interesting project going on during the games is "We are watching” – this project takes crowd sourced video of the games and projects the footage onto buildings in Vancouver.
Wouldn’t it be great to try and get some children’s work up there?
Finally
If you are interested in the use of social media in schools (not just for the Winter Olympics) why don’t you have a look at these two articles to find out a bit more information about the sort of things you can do…
2) Twit to woo: how to harness social media
...Stop Press...
On a completely different note if social media doesn’t interest you and you are disappointed by this post – download this Canadian resource Pack from Promethean Planet instead. There are lots of great flipchart activities to help your classes learn about Canada!
Great ideas for a really relevant learning opportunity in so many ways! Good x-curricular project possibilities; culture; geography; health & well being and also language learning I saw some really good youtube clips of the Canadian women's icehockey team talk about their match preparation in French - a really good way to make language learning relevant in the classroom
Posted by: catriona Oates | January 19, 2010 at 10:34 AM