Saturation of many social media platforms these days

With the saturation of many social media platforms these days, such as Intagram, Pinterest, Tumbler, not to mention mainstays like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Youtube, it seems like there is no need for another. However, Scoop.it is gaining traction and might just be the best social media site for teachers and students yet — academically that is.What is Scoop.it?

In case you have not heard of it, Scoop.it is a social media site that allows media consumers to group or store media content by topic or themes. For example, say  you read a bunch of really cool articles about teaching and technology. With Scoop.it you can create a theme and then post a collection of articles related to that theme. As the articles build, the pages starts to resemble a sort of magazine cover. To post an article or video, you just need to insert the url in the specified text field. Scoop.it then posts a link to the site and all relevant meta data, such as a picture from the article and a short text description. You can then enter a comment about the article to express your feelings about the content.

Now this may sound similar to Facebook, but the visual display of Scoop.it allows each theme to dominate the screen, which is hard to do in Facebook. Also, viewers can add comments to your comments and create a dynamic dialogue on the topic.

Based on my early use of the site, three possibilities really stand out for teachers.1) Extensive Reading Journal

Students can keep track of all the web content they read in one spot. Also, they can comment on each article so their participation in more active. They can also invite others to read the content and it is easy for teachers to track their involvement and level of participation. Also, because the site is not used widely in social circles, it does not infringe on students’ personal life like Twitter or Facebook might.2) Bibliography

As all teacher’s know, citing sources can be a bit dodgy. Scoop.it allows for a streamlined process to keep track of articles and content for an academic paper. Also, students can summarize or paraphrase content from the article in the comment box and use this as their written resource, thus avoiding plagiarism.3) Collaboration

Students can easily share content for group projects. For instance, if some students are working together to do research, they can all post articles related to the project and share thoughts online. Similarly, the teacher could check in on their curations to monitor progress or steer students in the right direction or give feedback.

The verdict is still out on the site, and most teachers are probably unaware of it, but it shows lots of potential and could be real asset for teachers in the coming years.

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