Overview of Workshop1 :

Social software can generate powerful learning networks - from simple individual actions that help create an 'architecture of participation', to links that connect people for a common purpose. Weblogs, wikis, social bookmarking and tagging (so-called Web 2.0 tools) have all emerged as powerful collaborative tools, but their greatest transformational potential exists within companies and organisations that embed them into their learning strategies. This workshop will review ideas and innovative tools and apply them to solving the real world needs of learning environments in organisations.

Agenda:

• What is Social Software?

• Underpinning concepts in a learning context - social learning theories

• Your context - why are you interested in social software.... how can you apply it in your practice?

• Models of teaching: Baumgarten's 3 modes - relate to your context

• Examples: the software in practice
  • RSS
  • Aggregators
  • Blogs
  • Wikis
  • Social bookmarking / tagging eg. Delicious
  • Flickr
  • Podcasts
  • Vodcasts - YouTube
  • MySpace
  • Second Life

• Resources

• Review your context now - based on your initial thoughts... how can you apply social software into your practice immediately...

What is Social Software?

Social software refers to the range of applications that augments group interactions and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and aggregates information exchanges in a web-based environment.

Social software can also be considered as the major component of the current Web 2.0 definitions and at the focal point of e-Learning 2.0, a term attributed to Stephen Downes in 2005 where he characterises the use of social software applications as “…placing of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner…”(Downes, 2005, para. 12).

from LT2005: read "Social Software: The Age of Connection and the Connected Learner"

Underpinning Assumptions

• communication
• social sharing
• networking
• trusted resources / recommendations
• collaboration
• self-publishing / creation
• subscribing

Social Learning Theories

Social learning theories recognise that learning occurs in a social context through interactions with others and subsequent learning is influenced by observing and modeling the patterns of behaviour (Bandura, 1978).

Publishing and participating online with social software creates a complex sphere of communication. The social structure of the environment comprising of an infinite variety of people, both readers and writers, supporting the structure of network evolution that develops through an ecology of links and connections. The social networking and the collaborative spaces that are created by the personalising of content and sharing of information has been identified as the basis for the human or social dimension for the popularity of the phenomenon currently being observed.

Baumgarten's (2004) Modes of Teaching - Pedagogical Implications

Mode 1: Transfer (Direct Teaching)	Mode 2: Tutor (Facilitated learning)	Mode 3: Coach (Informal Guide)
Programmed instruction	Problem solving	Complex simulations
To teach, to explain	To observe, to help, to demonstrate	To co-operate, to support
To know, to remember	Selection of methods and its use	Realisation of adequate action strategies
Transfer of knowledge	To do, to practise	To cope, to master
	Presentation of pre-determined problems	Action in real situations (complex and social)

Social Software examples:

RSS – syndication & aggregation - Really Simple Syndication – a method of XML-based programming that allows content to be imported into other web pages.

RSS enables readers to subscribe to information (webfeeds) from sites of their choice, monitor updates, and view them in a single page from a web-based service called an aggregator, eg. Bloglines - a free subscriber service.

The power of the aggregator for learners comes from the ability to control and manage the flow of information in a centralised manner.

Collaborative spaces: web-based collaborative publishing spaces such as weblogs, or blogs, have been the core of the increasing popularity of social software and have developed into powerful personal spaces that allow the author to self-publish and organise their information or knowledge.

In addition, the interaction with their readers through comments or linking functions, and the ability to subscribe to updates through syndication tools has been seen the weblog technologies as the foundation to further developments in education.

Other web-based shared spaces like wikis include the functionality to communicate, co-edit documents and web pages, share calendars, view multimedia presentations and build collaborative projects.

The popularity of these applications has been attributed to the ease of use and flexibility which only requires the user to have internet access and no HTML programming skills. Popular examples of free wikis used in educational settings are Wikispaces or PBWiki.

Social bookmarking or tagging with folksonomies - social bookmarking is a web-based application that is similar to a Favourites list in a browser, except that it allows the user to bookmark, manage, publicly publish, comment upon, and create their own tags for each URL they want to share.

The objective is to publish your resources for other people with similar interests. The key to the shared resource is the development of a social tagging system – called folksonomies – derived from the term taxonomy, a hierarchical list or categorisation - the folksonomy focuses on a group of people co-operatively organising information into agreed categories.

In addition, these tags have RSS feeds which can be collected into the learners’ aggregator, becoming a powerful research and resource gathering tool. A prevalent example is Delicious.

Social sharing services – similar to social bookmarking, these are applications that share other services – for example, Flickr is a web-based photo sharing service that uses the folksonomy tagging process to collect and share photos publicly or privately across the web. In the educational context, photos can be gathered for projects and the agreed tagging systems allow collective sharing.
eg. Go to the Flickr site and in the top right hand corner, type "LT2006" into the Search everyone's photos box and hit search. The results will gather all the photos from any Flickr user who has tagged their photos with LT2006.

Podcasts – digital audio files that are downloaded from the internet onto learners’ personal audio playing devices such as iPods, where the content can be listened to at the learners’ convenience.

Podcasting is emerging as one of the most popular current innovations in social software with major research projects investigating the beneficial effects on learning (Impala),and edition 10 of the Knowledge Tree – the Australian e-Journal of flexible learning in vocational education – dedicated entirely to podcasting.

Vodcasts - Here's 2 short videos - or vodcasts - 9minutes each - from Alex Halavais on blogging in education. Not only is the content engaging but they also demonstrate how you can use a site like YouTube and a short message to enrich the learning experience!