Especially when in comes to
Facebook, today’s college students are no strangers to the benefits of social
media. More than 80% of college students have profiles on Facebook. However,
when I randomly poll students here at UCSB regarding the other major social
media sites out there, I see very few hands go up. For whatever reason, it
seems that students have yet to embrace the rich value of other social media
tools.
Here is a list of five of
my favorite web 2.0 apps that can help you network, collaborate, communicate,
and make your daily college/life tasks a bit easier. Of course there is always
a learning curve and not every tool is for everyone. But I urge you to try them
out for yourself and see which ones indeed make going about your day a little
easier. Best part, each service is free.
Cramster- http://www.cramster.com/
Last month, a Mashable online article rated Cramster #1 in their ‘10 Must-Try Social Media Sites for College
Students’ (http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/social-media-college/).
Cramster prides itself as the premiere community of study groups for college
students taking Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering,
Math, Mechanical Engineering and Physics. Membership is free however there is a
premium member option for approximately $10 a month that provides you with additional
benefits. As a member, I can create a profile, get step-by-step solutions to
textbook problems, access lecture notes and resources, try practice problems,
post questions and answers on the Q&A Board, and accumulate Karma points that
can be redeemed for rewards.
I found the
Practice section quite useful. You can browse practice problems by subject and
by degree of difficulty (easy, medium, & hard). Their Q&A board acts as
an online tutorial service and allows you to post questions and find
information that is not typically found in textbooks. For the most part, I’ve
found the board to be active and busy and can be a valuable resource for
students. Cramster also offers information via their Study Blog, where industry
experts and guest bloggers post useful information on just about everything
from study tips to social networking. But I don’t need to tell you that, you
reading one right now.
Twitter- http://twitter.com/
I’ve been completely fascinated with the quick rise and transformation of Twitter,
especially over the past couple of months. I originally signed up for an
account in February of 2008 and thought that it would be great way for friends
and family to stay connected as my wife and I anticipated the arrival of our
first child. I tweeted when I found out we were having a girl and I tweeted
when we were on our way to the hospital after my wife went into labor. With one
text message, I was able to update everyone important to us about the arrival
of our daughter, the time of birth, weight, and length.
The way I am using Twitter
these days has completely changed. Now I use Twitter to connect with friends,
get the latest sports news from ESPN, network with other professionals in my
field, stay updated on current trends in many different industries, and share information
- with new uses constantly emerging. I know what the critics are saying; who really
cares about what you’re doing right now or the last thing we need are more
interruptions in our hyper-connected lives. But with Twitter, I’m able to
tailor the information that’s of interest to me with no obligation to respond
like email or IM. Twitter proved to be invaluable resource during the recent
Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara.
The local radio and news stations were tweeting fire updates and the Santa
Barbara Red Cross was sharing evacuation information. As a student looking for
a job, particularly in the social media industry, Twitter has to be considered
among the top resources to network and learn about any industry.
LinkedIn- http://www.linkedin.com/
During Joel Cheesman’s keynote at the 2008 National Association of Colleges and
Employers Annual Conference, he said, “If you are not encouraging your students
to join LinkedIn, you are doing them a disservice.” LinkedIn is all about
making connections and building a professional network. Admittedly, it took me
a while to see the value and viewed it as just another social networking site.
But once I constructed my profile, added a few contacts, and began networking
with likeminded people across the country in my profession, I soon began to
realize the potential of this site.
I recently blogged about
ways students can use LinkedIn to find a job. I revealed some tips to building
a network, created a professional brand, find hiring managers, and getting the
word out to that you are looking for a job. (See my blog for the post: http://ignacio.posterous.com/). Once
you’ve built your network, it’s important to find a way to add value to it.
Recently, I created a group specifically for career center staff interested in
learning ways to use Twitter at their university/college. I gathered some
useful links and resources, invited other career center staff in my network to
join, and began a discussion. Within just a couple of weeks, there were over 50
members from both in and out of my network productively engaged in dialogue,
sharing information and resources, and making new connections.
LinkedIn
recently added a couple new features, ‘Answers’ and ‘Polls. The new ‘Answers’
feature allows you to submit a question for the entire LinkedIn network to view
and respond to. You can also be an expert by answering questions and sharing
your knowledge. The ‘Polls’ feature allows you to quickly and easily create a
poll, distribute it to your network or to a selected group of professionals
(targeted by the expertise you are looking for), and collect useful data that
can be analyzed and shared with everyone in your network.
Posterous- http://posterous.com/
I believe people blog to have a voice, to express opinions and perspectives
about the things they care about which wouldn’t normally be heard in mainstream
media. When I finally decided to start a professional blog, I needed to select blogging
software. I use Google’s Blogger for our family blog to share photos, videos
and updates about our new daughter with family and friends. I had thought about
using Blogger for my professional blog as well but ultimately decided it would
be more valuable to experience other software instead. With that in mind, I
looked for software that took a new approach to blogging. As it turned out, the
search wasn't long and the results were clear.
Posterous, in my opinion,
is the most innovative blogging platform out there, primarily because it uses
email as its primary interface. It’s extremely easy to set up, allowing
you to post new things online fast, even from multiple email addresses. Using
email as a blogging interface makes perfect sense. All you have to do is send
an email to: post@posterous.com and your new entries are posted instantly
to your blog. If you can use email, then you can have your own website to share
thoughts and media with friends, family and the world.
Two additional unique
features are attachments and autoposting. When you attach files to an email,
Posterous performs cleverly. Photos are resized with the option to view in
original size, videos are flash encoded and embedded, and mp3s are added to a
flash player. Posterous also allows you to integrate your blog posts with other
social media platforms. For instance, with the autoposting feature, it’s
possible to configure Posterous to automatically update your blog, Twitter
account and Facebook account, all at the same time. For students looking to
create a professional brand using an innovative blogging platform, Posterous is
the way to go.
Remember the Milk-
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
In college, keeping
track of everything you have to do each day can be a pretty tough challenge. As
a college student, I was a list maker and used a daily calendar to keep track
of deadlines for class projects, work hours, and meeting times with my academic
advisor or career counselor. Even more so today, having a convenient online
solution for daily task management that integrates nicely with other
technologies is crucial. Remember the Milk provides just that solution.
At first glance, RTM can
seem a little intimidating. But after you spend a little time learning all the
features, you will soon begin to discover what a simple yet powerful
productivity tool it can be. It allows you to create and manage tasks, sort
them into convenient lists, and assign due dates and reminders. You can choose
text-message and e-mail reminders of due dates and it supports mobile access from
any web-enable cell phone. You can also add new tasks by sending an email to a
unique address created for you. Instead of logging into RTM each time to create
a new task, I created an email signature template which I fill out and send
away. Emails sent to this address automatically appear in your RTM inbox which
you can file under the appropriate list or check as completed. Some of the
other highlights include full integration with Google Calendar (which doesn’t
even have a task manager), the ability to add tasks via Twitter (although I’ll
admit I haven’t really played with this feature yet), and a Firefox extension
that adds a to-do list directly to your Gmail account.
