Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks Workshop
A UKOLN Workshop

Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks.

The one-day workshop on "Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs and Social Networks" will provide an opportunity for participants to hear about the approaches institutions are taking in the provision of or use of blogs and social networking services.

The workshop will provide three institutional case studies which illustrate the diversity of approaches which are possible, including use of a proprietary VLE (Blackboard) to host a (closed) blogging environment for students, use of an open source blogging service (Elgg) and use of a global social network (Facebook). Following on from these views from the institution we will hear a talk which describes the students perspective, based on work being carried out by the Student Union at the University of Bath.

As well as these case studies, two further talks will outline the requirements for the user communities and the challenges which institutional support services (including IT service departments) will need to address in supporting such services.

The workshop will provide an opportunity for group discussions on the issues highlighted in the talks.

A WiFi network will be available during the workshop.

At the end of the workshop delegates should:

• Have gained an understanding of blogs and social networks including what they are and how they can be used.
• Have learnt about the potential of blogs and social network to support teaching and learning, research and support activities within the institution.
• Have discussed the potential difficulties in providing, maintaining and supporting blogs and social network.
• Have had an opportunity to discuss approaches to the deployment of blogs and social network within the institution.

This workshop was held at Austin Court, Birmingham on Monday 26^th November 2007.

The closing date for bookings was Friday 26^th October 2007.
The workshop fee, which includes workshop materials, lunch and coffee and access to the WiFi network, is £85.

The workshop was organised by UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital information management based at the University of Bath. The workshop chair is Brian Kelly (UKOLN). Michelle Smith (UKOLN) is responsible for the workshop organisation and administration.

The recommended tag for the workshop is 'blogs-social-networks-workshop-2007'. We suggest this tag is used in social bookmarking services (such as del.icio.us), photographic sharing services (such as Flickr), Blogs, etc.