- "to create more free value" through "an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes";
- "to grow a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning"; and
- accommodate those with "a common interest in using social media to afford a more student-centric, constructivist, collaborative, inquiry-oriented learning".
This is just the kind of thing Blackboard would say, huh? But they are for-profit, whereas socialmediaclassroom is open source and not-for-profit and Web2.0 and community-oriented and student-centred...
...and states that "Knowing how to use social media productively is becoming more and more important to business enterprises and civil society. " I'm disappointed that it's business first, civil society second. Elsewhere it talks of "the emergence of a market for intelligent information-filtering and knowledge-dissemination". Not sure what form the transactions in that market will take. The site is quiet on that one and I'm concerned about that to be honest, as more stuff gets uploaded and more transactions take place. In part this is because I just can't find the IPR/copyright/creative commons statement on the site. But then I couldn't find the tomato ketchup for my eggs this morning either...
I'm also not sure what I think about the risks of this community-Web2.0-extended-VLE approach rather than tool/RSS aggregation, facilitated by a tutor, that lets student aggregate their resources in their own places having made their own decisions. Or maybe we do want some more free ranging in a controlled environment rather than lone ranging on the web by students - the risks are maybe higher in an unlimited, de-regulated web.
Anyway, I look forward to the robust, pedagogic evaluation of the SMC. Moreover, I look forward to the modelling that might appear around a centred, one-stop-Web 2.0-shop, as opposed to an aggregated approach. But for the moment I'll carry on with Netvibes, Twitter, Facebook, grou.ps and the rest...
1 comment:
Integration of tools in one common place, space – of course it’s far easier for the user to access and hence make use of. Do we need to account for individual differences in our design of social media? Commonality does bring us closer together and its human nature in our understanding of our environment to group ‘things’ that have something in common; it’s how we make sense of our world. In reference to "the conviction that an integrated set of tools would make it far easier to integrated multiple new communication modes into the learning process, and to the discovery that the use of these tools and collaborative inquiry hold the potential for engaging students more actively and passionately in learning, by making them responsible for formulating and pursuing questions, rather than for memorizing a body of knowledge" – this reminds me of having a website all encompassing (to a degree!) what is needed to know about a subject in one area. Our current structure of separate online modules based on the level of student can be looked as an example; maybe we should reconsider having a online ‘space’ for a programme of course which contains resources that is needed for the whole course, (rather than generic information we might hold on a programme shell) here comes the but – but is that possible in our current teaching and assessment structure? Certainly it will allow for more enhanced, sharing of experience (peer), sense of community and the pursuit of questions! Students would be more active as it won’t be laid out all in front of them but they would have to have guided learning activities to pursue from one learning activity to the next – are we ready for this? – In HE we have tiered learning – we would not introduce theory B or school of thought B until students have familiarised themselves with ‘A’ – in some courses this is absolutely essential. However in some courses this can be less challenging, having an integrated approach using new modes of technological communication and resources may be useful for many programmes of learning. It is essential in this approach that students are allowed to self reflect and assess (as well as in groups) their own learning. As Richard mentions we may want to consider having ‘free ranging’ in a controlled environment – I prefer the term ‘guided’ environment!
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