Social media tools and applications in Higher Education

Luís Pedro | Carlos Santos | U. Aveiro | ECIU Glasgow 14-03-08

Context

★ Multimedia in Education Masters Course

★ Training of active, critical and reflexive professionals/researchers

★ In-service professionals, mostly teachers

Why?

★ Conforming learning roadmaps with strong labour commitments

★ Message inheritance to future generations of ICT using

★ Flexible learning time management

What? (at curricular level)

★ B-learning offer

★ Sequential curricular structure

★ Face-to-face sessions at beginning and end of each curricular unit

★ Intermediate activities occur at a distance

Curricular time organisation model

What (bridging...)

★ Curricular decisions have sound pedagogical repercussions

★ Concentration on a single curricular unit at a given moment in time | work overload, intense information flow, informed and shared group decision-making work

★ Potential engagement, communication and learning problem

What (pedagogically)

★ Technology

★ But for what?

★ Learning about technologies or learning with technologies?

★ What message are we passing to these students?

★ What message will they pass for their students?

What is happening?

★ Globalisation (what is where? what is now? what is how? what is who?)

★ Epistemological shifts (temporary nature of knowledge)

★ Ontological shifts (not only a consumer, but a prosumer)

★ Communication tools and services

Learning and technology 101

★ It´s not about technology, it’s about people

★ Web 1.0 | Web 2.0 | Web 3.0 or Semantic Web

★ 3 interacting and mutually influencing vectors: learning, teaching methodology, technology

★ It´s up to us to dynamically shape this triangle

Web x.0

Is it or isn’t it?

★ Framing social context

★ Is the frame part of the picture?

★ Situated learning, contextual learning, social constructivism...

Why?

★ Sharing and collaborating nature of work

★ Shared and negotiated meanings

★ Communication | peer and teacher-student

★ Openness | major social interaction

What?

★ Sharing, interaction and participation continuous flow

★ Learning communities

★ Social media tools and applications

Sufficiently mine technological solutions?

★ LMS | It is so flexible, wasn’t it?

★ Are students sufficiently in control?

★ Are these platforms sufficiently open?

★ Is it sufficiently easy to integrate content?

★ Are they sufficiently empowering and engaging tools?

The Web by Tim Berners-Lee

★ “The basic [idea] of the Web is that [of] an information space through which people can communicate, but communicate in a special way: communicate by sharing their knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just that it should be a big browsing medium. The idea was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, as well as taking them out.”

http://www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tbl.html (1999)

Quick survey

★ Who has a Web presence besides institutional ones?

★ Who had put new information in past week? Past month? Past year?

The Web 2.0 by Stephen Downes

★ “... What was happening was that major parts of the Web were acquiring the properties of communication networks, the sort of networks found to exist (albeit on a much smaller scale) in the physical world. And that the Web itself was being transformed from what was called “the Read Web” to “Read-Write Web” in accordance with Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision. Proponents of this new, evolving Web began calling it Web 2.0 and in short order the trend became a movement.”

http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1 (2006)

The Web 2.0 by Michael Wesch and...

Assistant Professor of Cultural AnthropologyKansas State University ...by his students

The Machine is Us/ing Us (2007)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

A Vision of Students Today (2007)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Web 2.0 in MMEd

★ Previous knowledge and experience with Web 2.0 tools... very low

★ Previous effective use of LMS... low

★ Students: “Even more tools to manage?”

★ Expecting some negative reactions...

Learn by doing/Hands-on approach

★ Start with basic concepts related to Web 2.0

★ Show most common tools (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking,...)

★ Objective: learn how easy it is to use Web 2.0 tools

★ Result: become Web 2.0 contributors

How to understand it?

★ feel it first...★ Promote a good experience for first time users (a teacher’s job)

★ Engage students in collaborative learning activities designed to take advantage of Web 2.0

★ ... reflect and discuss about it next★ Be curious

★ Learn to find the right tools and strategies for specific needs

blogs

wiki

social bookmarking

student tools

?

?

??

??

?

syndication and aggregation

the old and slow way

the new and fast way

images from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU (2007)

LMS vs PLE

Scott Wilson (2005) - http://zope.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20050125170206

How does your presence look like?

★ Where are you? Who are you? Do you share common interests with me?

★ Where are the non-verbal components of social interaction in Web scenarios?

★ Synchronous and distributed nature of interaction

Second Life

★ MUVE - MultiUser Virtual Environment

★ Social and economic interaction

★ It´s not someone else’s world and someone else’s imagination

Second Life and Learning

★ Formal learning activities: difficult to monitor, boring, possible cognitive overload due to number of interactions

★ Informal learning activities: massive set of interaction tools, participation and responsibility promoters

Informal activities in SL

★ Invited specialist (as in with Warwick presentation on Wednesday)

★ Blurred roles (student, teacher, specialists)

★ Management and metalearning skills (CTEd subject)

SL Informal activities

SL UA Island

SL social and scientific activities

Conclusions

★ Learning spaces: closed and carefully managed or open and flexible?

★ Attitudinal and cultural or technological skills?

★ University 2.0 Portal (action-research)

★ and... how to use it in Bologna context?

thank you

★ Luís Pedro★ email: lpedro@ua.pt

★ blog: http://nitratodocaos.blogs.ca.ua.pt/

★ SL: Zes Garfield

★ twitter: lfpedro

★ Carlos Santos★ email: carlossantos@ua.pt

★ blog: http://napraia.blogs.ca.ua.pt/

★ SL: Carlosss Lukas

★ twitter: csantos