Social networking: Arts Presentation

Social networking’s potential for teaching and learning Mary Thorpe and Philip Greaney Institute of Educational Technology Thanks to Stuart Brown, Keith Honnor, Mick Jones, Sheran Slade, Non Scantlebury and AL s involved in the project Social Networking for Practice Learning (SNPL)

If Flickr collects and shares photos

and

Delicious collects and shares bookmarks…

Funded by the Practice-Based Professional Learning CETL

4 ALs from OUBS, 5 from HSC

Using social networking to explore the potential of Delicious and RSS for:

Student learning

Knowledge management/updating/research needs of ALs

Email, wiki, explanatory videos, FlashMeeting and closed Facebook site used to work together as a group, with IET

ALs worked on a series of tasks clearly specified in advance, so they built up confidence and skills stage by stage

Key features of the tools that proved their potential:

Shared tags, tag subscription and setting up a network across group members on Delicious

Working together to establish an agreed set of feeds for ALs in each faculty

The course team sets up defined tags that tutors and students will use for bookmarking on the course e.g.B823_Technologies, B823_Communication

B823 tutors search and tag resources so these already on Delicious before students start

Student welcoming letter includes tutor’s Delicious name and links to guide&video on setting up Delicious account

Students set up their own account and create a network of their tutor group

During the course they search for and tag at least 10 websites using Delicious using the notes field to explain what their resource contributes to course understanding

In this way students will add to the B823 tagged bookmarks created by tutors as they do their research for TMAs…At the end of the course they will have built up a supplementary ‘Managing Knowledge’ resource that will continue to be available after the course. The work they have done on this presentation, in tagging sites, will be a starting point for the next cohort of B823 students. The description fields on the tags can be used to build up different ideas of the value of the page in the context of managing knowledge…Pages that get very few tags can be deleted by a student but he/she can justify that in the course forum.

Independence in learning - going beyond course resources

Active processing through tagging and description

The network makes one student’s work available to all – increases likelihood of finding good material, promotes idea of learning from each other, builds resources from presentation to presentation

ALs had no difficulty designing activities to deliver learning outcomes such as:

For HSC

Locate Information relevant to health and social care through reference to a range of sources

Evaluate the reliability of different sources of evidence

Use a wide range of study skills appropriate to degree level

For OUBS

You should be able to reflect and critically appraise the human and technological dimensions of developing and implementing strategies for managing knowledge in practice

Week 10: students given detailed explanations for setting up Delicious account and shared tags – H800_2009, H800_block1_2009, etc

Explanation given for how to subscribe to tags that students want to follow regularly, including the H800 tags

Week 18: Delicious, RSS and Twitter used in turn (instructions for new users given) in order to find resources to explore three key issues for that week e.g. what evidence can we find about the actual use of social networking and its accessibility in different countries/groups?

Students set up their tutor group as a network and share resources

TMA associated with this block asks students to incorporate some resources derived from using these tools in their assignments

When saving any resources connected with H800, we recommend you select the most relevant of those listed here:

H800_2009

H800_block1_2009

H800_block2_2009

H800_block3_2009

H800_block4_2009

To search for all bookmarks tagged with one of the H800 tags, go to the Delicious home page and click on the down arrow beside ‘Tags’ in the toolbar across the top. Select ‘Explore’ and type ‘H800_block2_2009’, for example, or ‘H800_2009’ and click the arrow at the right-hand end of the box. You will get all the examples that have already been saved as bookmarks with that tag. If you use the tag ‘H800’, you may also find articles that members of the course team have selected during the production phase of the course.

SNPL still current - Any OU course team member can access wiki and resources via IET team and start using tools

Course teams can use existing H800 course materials as an exemplar, could use the site for AL preparation/staff development

Projects with HSC and OUBS course teams being set up

Individual meetings with a team are a useful beginning

Technologically feasible: sites are free to join, easy to use and run on technology like mobiles.

Large userbase: if only we could create an educational community with a userbase like Facebook …

Sustaining communities: for distance learners without a ‘bricks and mortar’ campus (and even those that have), social networks can create and sustain a richly variable and geographically-scattered community.

Spaces: creates different spaces for working and ‘socialising’ within a single site, creating formal and informal networks.

Rich functionality: writing apps (widgets, gadgets) can add specific functionality to an existing social network: Course Profiles; My OU Story.

You can view and download this presentation

from the following web address:

Mary Thorpe & Phil Greaney Institute of Educational Technology [email_address] [email_address]

Overview

Social networking Learn About Guide

http://kn.open.ac.uk/workspace.cfm?wpid=8738

Social networking in plain English video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc&eurl=http:/facebooklife.net/blog/facebook-tutorials/understand-what-is-social-networking/

What is social networking?

http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/

Map of Web 2.0 apps HQs

http://www.platial.com/map/Web-2-0-HQ-Map/1768

List of social networking sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

‘ Social network services’ definition from Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_services

Social networking blog

http://www.socialnetworking-weblog.com/

If you use the internet, it’s likely you use broadband

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7105242.stm

Social networking in education

OU Facebook Position Statement (PDF) (Internal only)

http://www.open.ac.uk/online/objects/fb-position-statement.pdf

H800 is a course that makes use of social networking (Internal only)

http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01H800

UK University pages on Facebook

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/revisiting-uk-university-pages-on-facebook/

Facebook in Wolverhampton University

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/library-20-at-the-university-of-wolverhampton/

‘ Make friends before you start’: Facebook Guardian Article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/30/students.facebook

A search of the tags ‘social_networking’ and ‘education’ in everyone’s Delicious

http://delicious.com/search?p=social_networking+education&u=&chk=&context=all&fr=del_icio_us&lc=1

Classroom 2.0 (a site about Web 2.0 in education that uses the Ning platform)

http://www.classroom20.com/

OpenLearn social networks

http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/about-us/our-networks.php

E-learning at Sheffield Hallam

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html

Tools for sharing

Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/

How to get the most out of Flickr (and what it does)

http://www.flickr.com/get_the_most.gne

Guidelines for using Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

Online photo sharing in plain English

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vPU4awtuTsk

Delicious (formerly del.icio.us)

http://delicious.com/

A search for ‘social_networking’ on Delicious

List of social bookmarking sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_software#Social_bookmarking

Social bookmarking in plain English

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

Some social software tools Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ Citeulike (academic social bookmarking socftware) http://www.citeulike.org/ SocialLearn presentation (Martin Weller) http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/02/the-sociallearn.html Dipity (timeline creation software) http://www.dipity.com/ Google maps http://maps.google.com/ Facebook http://www.facebook.com

E-learning references, with especial focus on collaborative activities and learning Brown, R. (2001) ‘The process of community-building in distance learning classes’, JALN , vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 18–35; also available online at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v5n2/index.asp Carson, S. (2005) MIT OCW 2004 Programme Evaluation Findings Report , Cambridge, MA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; also available online at http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/90C9BC91-7819-48A0-9E9A-D6B2701C1CE5/0/MIT_OCW_2004_Program_Eval.pdf Castells, M. (2001) The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press) Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (2002) How Do People Learn? , CIPD Dalsgaard, C. (2006) ‘Social software: E-learning beyond learning management systems’, European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning [online], http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm Dirkx, J and Smith, R ‘Learning to Learn in Online Collaborative Groups’ in Roberts, T. (ed) (2004) Online Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice (Information Science Publishing: London) Mason, R. and Rennie, F. (2004) The connecticon: learning for the connected generation (Information Age, US) Paulsen, M.F. (2002) Online Education Systems: Discussion and Definition of Terms [online], http://www.nettskolen.com/forskning/Definition%20of%20Terms.pdf Roberts, T. (2005) (ed) Computer-supported Collaborative Learning in Higher Education (Idea Group: London) Karen Swan and Peter Shea ‘The development of virtual learning communities’ in Hiltz, S. and Goldman, R. (ed) (2005) Learning Together Online: Research on Asynchronous Learning Networks (Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey) Weller, M. 2007 ‘Is education intrinsically a bit dull?’ EdTechie Blog http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2007/07/is-education-in.html

All photos are from Flickr unless other stated and are subject to the Creative Commons Licence agreement ( http://creativecommons.org/ )

StabiloBoss’s photostream at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/ davidking’s photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidking/2584489931/ Cougar-studio’s photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/suvcougar/1273657633/