Mar
30
Social Software in Education
Posted by: Diddly | March 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I am not a social software user, and though I have spent the best part of the morning reading up on the sites I mention below, I have no experience using them. Overall, my impresión is that, as has been mentioned in the forums, teachers must teach students how to use the Internet safely. I was not surprised by the Terms of Use policies of the social software sites, but I would never have bothered to read them had I not been instructed to do so. A starting point for any social software usage in an educational setting would be to read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and discuss with studetns the posible consequences of sharing personal information.
It is a little difficult to understand how Twitter Works without actually using it. I searched and read a few twitter feeds, but I am not sure I entirely get the idea.
Though users own the content that they upload to Twitter, Twitter collects infomation about its users and shares it with other companies. Twitter and its partner companies also reserve the right to reproduce, modify and distirbute user content in any way it sees fit. Twitter appears to consider this personal information as acompany asset because it reseves the right to sell it on if Twitter ever changed hands. Though presently Twitter doesn’t use advertising it reserves the right to place advertising specific to user content. Don’t post personal information that you don’t want shared. I think this site could be useful for certain EFL exercises. For example having the students keep a journal on Twitter using the present progressive. I see no reason why students can’t use it, especially if they create imaginary profiles.
Again without actually seeing the game , World of Warcraft, it is difficult to imagine what use it could possibly have in Education. The Terms of Use seem to protect the user and Blizzard, the company that owns the game, does not require personal information to play the game. However, any personal information voluntarily provided will be combined with other non personal information and can be shared with affiliated third parties. This information can be used for comercial opportunities, but it appears that users can request not to recieve publicity. Blizzard considers this information about users to be an asset and may sell it in some cases. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft) notes that Blizzard uses a spyware type program to check that users are not cheating by using third party programs. To do this the program collects certain information from the user’s PC. It is not clear if this information is also passed on to Blizzard.
Del.icio.us allows users to post links to websites. Any content posted by a user is available to be used by others unless it is marked by the user as private. User posted can also be labelled with one of several licenses so that other users know how they may use this content. Though delicious may collect some personal information about users, and uses cookies and web beacons to track information about users and usage, this information is not shared with third parties.
I can see that del.icio.us could be used to build learning communities. Students and instructor could work collaboratively to create a resource for the topics in the course by contributing relevant links using a tag established at the beginning of the course. This project could continue to grow, semester after semester, creating a valuable resource for students, ex-students and instructors.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life) “The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create”, I understand that this allows users to buy and sell virtual objects in the virtual world. Second Life collects personal information on users, but does not share this to any third parties without permission. Other users may see non identifiable information about other users. Second Life offers enormous opportunities for authentic second language practice. According to Linden Lab Vice President of Platform and Technology Development , Joe Miller, Second language learning is the most popular educative use of Second Life, especially when it is used with VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) (http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2009/05/second-life-embraces-voice.html). I would love to take my students on a guided trip around London and let them meet some of the local color to practice their English. However, the possibilities for experiencing non appropriate behavior seem large. For this reason it seems wise that Second Life is only for users over the age of 18.