Presentation to the educational research discussion group at Washington University. Discussion of social learning and professional networking with social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, Second Life, etc. Also some theory and background.
1. Grownups on Facebook and Twitter??Social Media for Learning Networks Liz Dorland @LDinSTL_Chimera Washington University in St. Louis dorland@wustl.edu
12. Robin Heyden in BLC workshop Now let’s move onto a specific Case Here you have a screen shot from my blog – which I call “Stepping Stones”. Back in July, I posted a blog entry about a jaguar conservation activity that makes use of Google Earth. It was a really cool activity that a HS teacher in St. Louis made up and I knew that other HS teachers would want to find out about it – and possibly use it. So, after talking with the teacher to make sure I understood how it worked, I blogged about it. The blog entry was about 1000 words long – so it was pretty meaty. Once I’d posted the blog entry, I began to advertise it. I put up a brief description of the idea and a link to my blog post on a teaching listserv that I am a member of. I also sent out a tweet about it. And I emailed a few of my other friends and teaching colleagues, who aren’t on twitter or on the listserv. That advertising phase took me about 5 minutes. And the results? Page views went from the daily average of 35-40 to 1000 in one day. Comments led me to two other new bloggers with similar interests and ideas. Well over 100 high school teachers, who read the post, emailed for more information on how to use the activity. If I were a business, I would now have well over 1000 new and well-qualified customers. It’s all about building community and harnessing the network effect.
29. “It seems likely that a great deal of informal learning is taking place both on and off campus via the online social networks.”John Seely BrownEducause Review
31. NSF: Cyberlearning Report 2008 A new participatory Web culture… New Web functionalities during the past several years have made participatory media culture a reality, contributing to the personal, professional, and educational lives of learners (Henry Jenkins, MIT 2006) http://www.henryjenkins.org/
32. NSF Report: Learning is Different ...scientists working in collaboratories conduct inquiries inside computer models of weather systems, fluid flows, or disease propagation… …reason through the representations with which they interact to make inferences about the world that they represent…
33. danahboydresearches the use of online social network communities and is the co-creator of the Vizster visualization tool for online social networks.“Students are likely to have created and posted content on the web by using YouTube,Facebook, Wikis, Blogs, or any of the wide variety of freely available tools commonly described as "Web 2.0" or "The Read-Write Web.”
34. Email from scientist about joining a Ning network… “I have no idea what to do there or how this site will be of use. I don't read blogs, I have no myspace page, and so maybe I'm too much of a dinosaur?” http://www.dinosaurdepot.com/