Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference at Sheffield Hallam University.

Before Christmas myself and Pete Mella went to the Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference at Sheffield Hallam University.

The Conference has run for a few years but was announced it would be the last time it would be run in this format. A new format will be announced sometime in early 2018.

The morning consisted of an approach called Build your own Conference (BYOC). The idea of this was that delegates could suggest an idea for a session or better still lead it. At the beginning of the day these were assigned to group common themes and allocate rooms.

The first session we attended was around an app swap of learning and teaching. A number of apps were suggested including:

• Padlet
• Wunderlist
• Trello
• Metaverse

There was a short introduction to Raspberry PI computers and suggested that Code Club was a good place to learn more about coding for a Raspberry Pi.

We then attended a session which used Lego to convey how you personally felt about social media which birthed some weird and wonderful creations.

#SocMedHE17 our joint lego build about our professional identity @Andy_Tattersall pic.twitter.com/RDt3olziLh

— Alex Spiers (@alexgspiers) December 19, 2017

In the afternoon we attended a session with a round table discussion on the idea of whether Social Media should be used in learning and teaching and what issues should be considered when using it in a learning context. This brought in a number of viewpoints but the consensus was that whilst Social media does seem to mostly have its place you need to exercise caution when using it.

Lastly we attended the TEF Crystal Maze. This used a series of challenges (or zones) to unlock a number of codes. In Turn you gain up to 3 crystals for each task. The winning team is the one with the most crystals.This was a great way to learn a little more about a topic that otherwise can be a little heavy.

Will you start the fans please.... #SocMedHE17 TEF #crystalmaze tech edition with @neilwithnell :) https://t.co/eblIwBmcCI pic.twitter.com/aJvLKUjyT3

— Emma Gillaspy (@egillaspy) December 18, 2017

Overall the day presented some interesting discussion around social media and its use in higher education. I look forward to seeing whats next for the conference in whichever form it decides to become.