Digital Literacy Centre

This week the Digital Literacy Centre has been offering workshops on the Affordance of Social Media in the Classroom. The workshops are examining a number of typical Web 2.0 applications and the ways in which they can be used in the context of pedagogy. There is growing interest in the educational prospect of these kinds of tools and applications, and particularly since they are part of a Digital Generation’s common literacy.

Here is one example of an attempt to create a collaborative space for educators and students called the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory (HERE). The Wikinomics blog (here) posted by Danny Williamson describes it thusly:

“The project, created by Howard Rheingold, describes itself as, “an invitation to grow a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning.” The site is a series of Web 2.0 tools (it offers forums, wikis, blogs, chat, social bookmarking, microblogging, social video, curricular materials, resource repositories and an online community of practitioners – available as an install or SaaS) that help to facilitate collaborative, student-led learning across a distance. The value of this project is not simply the ability to slap a 2.0 paintjob on an existing system but rather as a means to enhance the learning process.”

“…if you try to control or constrain a social network too tightly, you will choke it. Far better to set in place the minimum precautions necessary to ensure nothing blows up or melts down, and then let the participants work their magic. If you start obsessing too much about policies governing access to or use of social media tools, chances are you’ve missed the whole point of social media and may well end up being a hurdle on the path to success for your Enterprise 2.0 initiative.”

From Above and Beyond KM :

What are the limits of this position?

This interesting research endeavour was “Originally started as a sociology research project by Jeff Ginger, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, the endeavor has expanded to include several researchers, students, librarians, and enthusiasts who all have an important interest in common: Facebook.” It has morphed into an extensive inquiry with an open invitation to participate. The Facebook Project.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) held an online conference on e-learning November 4 – 7 of this year. You can look at its full program here. And documentation related to the query: Does Web2 fundamentally alter the learner-teacher relationship? (amongst other presentations) is here with a good discussion summary here.