Learning Experiences with Social Software - Ideas

About ITSST...

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:32:00 -0500

Who we are and what we do...

Instructional Technology Support Services

The Instructional Technology Support Services Team (ITSST), works with faculty to design, develop, and support the use of technology as part of the teaching and learning process. Our support services are delivered in collaboration with the HILLgroup (Hamilton Information and Learning Liaisons) and OCC (Oral Communications Center) to provide comprehensive, seamless support to faculty and students before and during a course. These services are designed to provide faculty with feasible course design and appropriate technology integration options. The various technology options are outlined on the web pages linked below. Other technology options are possible – just contact us to discuss your needs and ideas: 859-4877 (ITSS) or ITSS@hamilton.edu.

-Carl

Upcoming Events - Digital Gaming for Teaching and Learning: A professional development brown bag

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:44:00 -0500

I'm planning on attending this "virtual brown bag" on digital gaming for teaching and learning this Friday at 12:00. If you are interested in participating, please let me know and I will set up a room and computer for a small group to participate.

Thanks,

-Carl

Authentic Learning Using the Participatory Web Presentation

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:06:00 -0500

Thanks to everyone who attended the first Authentic Learning Using the Participatory Web Information session!

Below is a link to a Flash version of the presentation. Note that the links do not work; clicking on them will only advance to the next slide. If you would like a link to any of the resources mentioned in the presentation, please send me an email at crosenfi@hamilton.edu.

Authentic Learning Using the Participatory Web Presentation

-Carl

Wikis in Plain English

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:39:00 -0500

Wikis in Plain English

-Carl

Computers and Human Beings

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:59:00 -0500

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

-Albert Eisntein

Social Software Presentation

Fri, 18 May 2007 16:07:00 -0500

On Monday, I'll be presenting on Blogs, Wikis and Podcasts at the Eastern New York Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries conference. Linked belowis a zipped archive of the presentation.

Update:

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation! I've updated the link below to go to the updated zipped PowerPoint and associated files.

Presentation

-Carl

A Great Blog Called Compos(t)ing

Thu, 10 May 2007 11:44:00 -0500

A recent commenter posted a link to a fantastic blog, entitled "compos(t)ing, that has posts on topics ranging from wikis to privacy in the age of social software to neat apps like stu.dicio.us.

It's definitely worth taking some time to explore.

-Carl

Here's a novel idea for using a wiki

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:54:00 -0500

A collaborative novel via wiki:

http://www.amillionpenguins.com/wiki/index.php/Welcome

-Carl

Backchanneling Emerging Technology Workshop from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:11:00 -0500

As an experiment in "back-channeling," I'll be updating this blog entry with ideas from the NITLE "Emerging Technologies" workshop at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. Please post any questions that you want me to ask as comments to this post.

Note that spell-checker can't be enabled on this machine, so expect some misspellings while I back-channel.

Bryan Alexander, Director of Research at NITLE is leading introductions around the room. I spoke with him briefly before the workshop. I asked if he knew Krista S. He does and said she is "great".

Bryan is talking about NITLE's mission and beliefs, using the website (http://www.nitle.org/). He points out their blog (http://b2e.nitle.org/) and says that we'll be talking about blogs today. Now he's moved on to their wiki (http://apps.nitle.org/wikifarm/research/index.php/Main/EmergingTech). All content for this workshop is/will be there, says Bryan. The agenda is there already.

Bryan has put today's presentation online at http://www.slideshare.net/BryanAlexander/social-software-in-education-an-early-2007-overview-20863/ (link fixed)

"Talking about Web 2.0 is like talking about gaming"

"Web. 2.0 doesn't look serious".

3/4 of Flickr members are not from U.S.

One element of Web 2.0 is "microcontent" (individual "chunks" of information).

Open Content - Use Amazon.com to find books in library.

Pepys Diary from 1600's as a blog: http://www.pepysdiary.com/

Data Mashup: A "collage" of two or more screens of data and combine them. Ex. Flickr + Google maps. I was thinking of Google Earth and Second Life last week. Imagine an exact replica of the earth to travel as a virtual entity.

Web 2.0: Take a project and add a social layer.

Blogs, wikis, Flickr are "social objects".

Metadata on sites like Flickr is not "professional, (or even good)" but it still works (in many cases). It's "good enough."

Folksonomy: Taxonomy created by us (folks). Idea for Digital Asset management - allow users to create tags based on what they see as appropriate. There may exist a difference between what a professional librarian sees and what users see.

Now we're taking a 15 minute break. Someone please post a question comment!

We have returned from our break and Bryan is now talking about podcasting.

Social software is a way to deal with copyright. Users create content and make it freely available.

Blogs have privacy issues. Teachers don't want student to feel intimidated due to the global nature of the posts.

"Some people argue that you should violate privacy." Break down that wall.

In Liberal Arts sector, we look at anything as a potential "teachable moment." Use the openness provided by social software to take advantage of this.

Remix: Take existing objects and change them to make them "mine".

Social software is a new way to create a narrative (Pulse, Lonelygirl15, Flickr - tell a story in five frames).

I mentioned that I am blogging the presentation. Bryan asked that I add a link to this entry to his wiki at http://apps.nitle.org/wikifarm/research/index.php/Main/EmergingTech, which I have done. I wonder, does revealing this back-channel to the "front-channel" betray the concept of back-channeling?

Use OPML to save RSS feeds.

15% to 20% of blogs survive past the first month.

We are now moving on to mobile and wireless computing. Except for the U.S, the phone (enhanced cell phones) have become the dominant technology. We use laptops instead.

Multitasking: Wireless increases the opportunity to multitask.

Privacy issues galore. Cell-phones as spy device: Call phone, leave it on and put it in a person's car.

Humorous note (because we discussed this as an issue just last week): Bryan wanted to show a game in Second Life, but couldn't because an update was required.

12:30 - break for lunch

1:30 - return to conference

Bryan is demonstrating Gliffy (http://gliffy.com/)

We've now moved on to podcasting. Popularity of podcasting possibly fueled by desire for music files created by P2P apps like LimeWire and iTunes.

Most argue that podcasts need to be syndicated (RSS)

"ProfCasting" - Instructors record their class and podcast the recording.

"StudentCasting" - Student-created podcasts.

Indie Music Podcasts - http://www.garageband.com/

Audio Books - http://librivox.org/

Podcast Browser: http://odeo.com/

Story Corp: http://www.storycorps.net/

Bryan is showing Audacity. He strongly recommends it, and seemed surprised that many people in the audience used it as well.

Create a podcast: http://www.gcast.com/ and http://www.libsyn.com/

Archive of the Web: http://www.archive.org/

Flock - The social web browser: http://www.flock.com/

2007 Horizon Report

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:12:00 -0500

If you haven't had a chance yet, take a look at the 2007 Horizon Report. The two technologies that are described in the "one year or less time-to-adoption horizon," user-created content and social networking, are areas that the Hamilton College social software initiative are prepared to support. If you've attended the Course Possibilities Using Social Software information session or looked over the PowerPoint (available on this blog), you're already aware that the technology and support services to create RSS-enabled user-created content in the form of enhanced podcasts and social networking through blogs and wikis are available for course support projects.

Some excerpts from the Key Trends and Critical Challenges sections that I found especially interesting:

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college. At the same time, in a sea of user-created content, collaborative work, and instant access to information of varying quality, the skills of critical thinking, research, and valuation are increasingly required to make sense of the world."
"Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship. The trends toward digital expressions of scholarship and more interdisciplinary and collaborative work continue to move away from the standards of traditional peer-reviewed paper publication. New forms of peer review are emerging, but existing academic practices of specialization and long-honored notions of academic status are persistent barriers to the adoption of new approaches."
"The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship. Amateur scholars are weighing in on scholarly debates with reasoned if not always expert opinions, and websites like the Wikipedia have caused the very notion of what an expert is to be reconsidered. Hobbyists and enthusiasts are engaged in data collection and field studies that are making real contributions in a great many fields at the same time that they are encouraging debate on what constitutes scholarly work—and who should be doing it."

The report also brought up the challenge of assessment of student work that makes use of new media. I believe that this challenge is actually an opportunity to analyze the processes involved in teaching and learning and evaluate what we want to students to learn, at what level we want them to learn it, and how we are going to measure their learning. User-created content and social networking, if used to drive pedagogically sound learning experiences, offer new and exciting ways to foster multiple types of interaction, high-level cognitive skills, creativity, and extremely efficient models for information (course content) delivery.

Note that the NMC used a wiki (http://www.nmc.org/horizon/wiki/Main_Page) to manage the research and discussion process.

-Carl

Course Possiblities Using Social Software Presentation

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:44:00 -0500

Thanks to everyone who attended the first Course Possiblities Using Social Software Presentation today!

Here is zipped archive containing the PowerPoint presentation with the links to information and examples related to the ideas presented.

If you missed today's session, remember that there are two more sessions this week, one at 11:00am on Wednesday and one at 2:00pm on Friday.

Hope to see you there,

-Carl

What is Social Software?

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 10:01:00 -0500

When people talk about "social software," they are usually referring to applications that utilize a network (often the Internet) to allow and encourage interaction and cooperative communication. Some popular examples of social software include Blogger, Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr, del.icio.us, and Google Docs. These web applications serve different purposes, but at their core is the theme of a "participatory web" experience. This means that the content associated with these sites is provided (and to varying degrees controlled) by the users of the application rather than the developer. This approach to online content is proving to have a significant impact on how the web is now being used. One form of social software, the blog, has already made a big impact in the form of "citizen journalism." You also may have heard that Wikipedia rivals Encyclopedia Britannica in content accuracy, and in an example that is perhaps even more relevant to us, college students are now using sites like ratemyprofessors.com to determine which courses (and schools) are best for them, based on the online descriptions of the course and professor posted by prior students.

What does this mean for faculty at institutions of higher education, such as Hamilton College? For one thing, it means that Hamilton Instructional Technology Support needs to be prepared to support teachers who want to use this technology in their courses. That's why I'm here.

For the past few months, I've been exploring, testing, installing and implementing software that can be reliably and dependably used by Hamilton College faculty and students. These applications include new programs in Apple iLife, which facilitate the quick and easy creation of sophisticated websites, as well as podcasts that allow the distribution of both audio and visual content through an RSS-based subscription feed. Also available are applications like Blog CFC and Canvas Wiki that are installed directly on the Academics server, which ensures that faculty and students have access to software that runs on Hamilton-controlled resources and is free from such issues as data-mining, advertisements and unwanted spam solicitations.

Already, examples exist of the use of social software at Hamilton. The Career Center has put up a podcast, providing valuable information on seeking employment and other topics, and several faculty are developing projects that use social software applications. One project is the creation of a virtual art exhibition by students using both a web site and video iPods for delivery. Another is the podcasting of educational units on Asian art to a global K-12 audience.

Though examples of how social software could be used in a liberal arts higher education setting already exist, all of these ideas came from Hamilton College staff and faculty. What this means to me is that there is really no way to predict what social software at Hamilton College will look like - it's really up to those individuals who have an idea that they would like to turn into reality. If you are thinking of a new course project that you think could take advantage of social software, please contact me and let me know what you want to do.

Hoping to hear your ideas soon,

Carl Rosenfield
Instructional Technology Support Specialist
Hamilton Information Technology Services
crosenfi@hamilton.edu