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Collaborative tools for learningCormac LawlerUniversity of [email protected]
‘Web 2.0’: what does it mean?
Tools
Qualities
‘Social media’
‘Social software’
‘Web 2.0’
‘Citizen journalism’
‘User-generated’
‘Peer-to-peer’
Questions for us…
• Can, or should, we use these tools for teaching and learning? How?
• How can we use these tools to form personal learning networks?
Elements of online networking• Profile (photos, personal info,
likes/dislikes…)
• Friends / contacts / followers
• Status updates – News feed
• What’s new / happening / popular…?
• Like / dislike / rate
• Tagging (people, articles…)
• Privacy controls – who sees what?
• ‘Block this person’ / ‘remove from feed’
• Advertising (targeted - personalised?)
Blogging
• Write posts• Comment on others’ posts• Create a professional or learning network• Many free blogging services (Wordpress,
Blogger)
Mainstream media increasingly open to (or in need of) ‘citizen journalism’
E.g.: Salam Pax, the ‘Baghdad blogger’
Twitter• Short posts (140 characters) - called
‘tweets’
• ‘Microblogging’
• Not ‘friends’, but ‘followers’
• Like Facebook, broadcast to your followers’ feeds - but also publicly
• Tweets can be made private (i.e. only visible to your followers)
Features of a tweet
@Name (e.g. @cormaggio): To address a tweet, or reply, to someone
#Hashtag (e.g. #haiti, #asaleeb): A way to tag a tweet, spread a message, etc.
RT (‘retweet’): Re-posting someone else’s tweet, sometimes with personal comment. (Include the @name of the person you are retweeting.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr/2048034334/
#networks
#friends
#followers
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html
Using Twitter at a conference
“It varies how much I tweet from conferences (or in general), but during this conference, I found myself using Twitter quite frequently. It serves as both a note taking function, a way to communicate with some of the others in the room, a way to focus on the content of the talk (rather than letting thoughts wander), and a conduit for people who are not participating.”
from Stian Haklev: http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/01/14/tweets-from-critical-point-of-view-wikiwars-conference-in-bangalore/
Other types of networking and sharing:• Flickr: Find images, Comment, Form
communities• Delicious, Digg: Tag & Rate articles• Slideshare: Share & Tag presentations
Faceworking (Selwyn, 2009)(Ethnography of Facebook use by UK university
students)
“Rather than attempting to appropriate Facebook for educationally ‘appropriate’ or ‘valid’ uses, or else regulate students’ use through coercion or surveillance, university authorities and educators are perhaps best advised to allow these practices to continue unabated and firmly ‘backstage’.”
Selwyn, N. (2009) Faceworking: exploring students' education-related use of Facebook', Learning, Media and Technology, 34: 2, 157 — 174
Alternatively…
(On introducing social networking space in class)
“In a sense, our students have tasted the proverbial honey and the move towards this type of social interaction in the field of education is, in my view, inexorable. Educators would be unwise not to take advantage of their students’ willingness to communicate and their desire to participate via this medium.”
http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=1727(via Suzanne: http://suezann.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/students-and-
blogs)
Wikis: an overview
• Wiki = a website you can edit
• Invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham
• Many uses - business, politics, education
• Many types - TWiki, MoinMoin, MediaWiki
• Hit mainstream with rise of Wikipedia (founded Jan 2001)
Wikipedia or “Jimmy Wales and the Sausage Factory”
• Huge, and growing (15 million articles in 270 languages; over 3 million in English)
• All produced by volunteers - not just a collection of articles but a community
• Controversy over veracity, authority, identity
• Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia “like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made”
(I argue differently!)
Wikipedia: a sausage factory tour• Recent changes - constantly monitored by community
• Watchlists (‘personalised’ recent changes)
• Talk pages - discussions, conflicts
• History: every version saved (transparency)
Work-in-progressConstant negotiation - “peer review on steroids” (Etienne
Wenger)
Explicitly states: “This article does not cite any sources”
Policies & guidelines (NPOV)
Quality processes: Featured articles; plans to create ‘stable versions’ of articles
Taskforces or ‘WikiProjects’ - working on particular areas
(Too) many technologies…There is a huge range
of technologies out there
No single person can be a master of them all (including me!)
We need to teach and learn from each other
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72388119@N00/3163614015/
Recapping abilities:
With these technologies, you can (usually) do one or more of:
Create: Create new content, or adapt existing content
Comment: Have your say, agree/disagree…
Tag: Make content searchable/findable
What do these tools mean for learning?
Your learning is not confined to this classroom
It doesn’t have to take place solely with the teacher, or with other course participants
You have control over your own learning
Teachers need to recognise this shift in power
• Lots of opportunities, but also lots of hype
• We need to be critical:
– what do I need to do?
– what can this tool offer me?
