Social Media and Privacy in the Classroom via ConnectYard

Concerned about privacy with the utilization of social media in the classroom? Looking for a way to connect across multiple platforms with students?

ConnectYard might be a solution to help your college or university meet those concerns and provide a better means of communication. Just remember, ConnectYard is a paid service that must be purchased by your college to utilize these features.

Privacy Concerns

ConnectYard enables dynamic, two-way conversations between faculty, staff and students without the need to “friend”, “follow” or even join a social network, so that privacy is effectively maintained. ConnectYard can be used for individual course communications as well as campus-wide messaging to entire departments, schools, colleges or universities.

Course Communications

ConnectYard is a a centralized social media communications platform that seamlessly integrates Facebook, Twitter and video as well as text messaging with popular Learning Management Systems (Blackboard) and portals (Atlas) to better engage students and expand overall institutional communication.

Faculty and staff have the option to post new messages or respond to student questions directly through the Blackboard or through their email without having to join a social networking site. Likewise, students can receive and respond to messages from social media spaces such as Facebook and Twitter or via any text-capable mobile device. All of the discussions are recorded in Blackboard regardless of where they originate.

 Campus Communications

ConnectYard allows increased communication capabilities for a wide variety of academic and administrative applications, including notifications regarding add/drop dates, billing information, closures, venue changes, campus parking, maintenance windows, campus-wide health concerns, emergencies and more. ConnectYard allows designated staff and administrators to easily send messages via email, text or Web to the entire community or specific interest groups.

Information Gathered via http://www1.connectyard.com/

Can you spot the Professor Josh cameo on this video?