Trends in Social Computing
Session 224
Wednesday
11:00 am-12:00 pm
SalonF
Session Abstract
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Session Notes
Kick-off discussion by Ben Brophy (MIT) and Cyprien Lomas (UBC)
Ben Brophy
Social computing is changing the way we approach our own development:
- See students as active participants in the learning activities
- Ask how do students use this?
- Avoid always thinking about faculty
Heard from students:
"make everything open"
"all my stuff in one place"
Cyrien Lomas
Students using tools that are already there, such as Flickr or Delicious
Demo of tagging using Sakai Conference as an example.
Open Discussion
Question:
what do we build into Sakai/where do we take advantage of existing tools. What are the pros and cons.
School of education – How to bring people engaged in teaching and learning into the conversation? Education schools and those in the discipline should be looking at this.
There is a Digital divide between faculty and students
Are faculty using backchannel? Are they aware of it?
Institutionalize vs. support for using tools that are out there... What are the tensions in regard to policy and managing an operational service and enterprise level system versus sociological/cultural perspective?
Good for students but what about for teaching - formalization might kill.
SIMS UCB student, Kelly Snow states that students will not like backchannel incorporated into the institution. The backchannel is theirs.
FIT/SUNY - LAMS will change this and the way that we integrate activity-based tools into Sakai.
Challenge: Flickr is fun, but how to make it work within institutional branding and environment...
Do we make these part of Sakai? If so, what are the ramifications?
Be able to better integrate and interoperate – Sakai as framework (share information between tools)
Create APIs/services to/from existing tools
VUE - TUFTS student centered, concept map. Puts students at the center. Good example – will be at the Tech demo on Thursday night.
Sakai needs a better RSS aggregator - do it right! This is a first step, but need to take this farther... (see integration comment above).
Issue common standard - RSS as standard -
IMS?
Can't leave faculty behind - gaming as an example. It doesn't work if they aren't part. How do we educate faculty on this?
There is a problem with external tools - Google as example
Consumer services, but things break a lot of maintenance. No incentive to ensure it works, Higher Ed. Institution's systems are generally are more static – out of necessity.
With Faculty need to structure... more.
Assessment – could use all these tools within. Move away from assessment = bad. Can use these to take back
Do not (at FTI) institutionalize
For the brave - these are the benefits...
Going forward
How pervasive is this really? Baseline data - group could create and use a common survey instrument
Rutgers is conducting a survey and will put results and instrument up on Confluence (Here!)
In regards to Faculty - not in touch, being a reality they don't know about. Ideas about how to educate?
This needs to be designed from ground up to fit into Sakai
Jerry Persons from Stanford – NEED: "Always available, my stuff, my way"
Allow people to work in Sakai environment and use in any setting (research, publishing, learning, etc...)
Look at what is going on in content management as example: what are the Communication paths?
Tools that should be integrated or APIs
RSS Aggregation
"Place for my stuff, my way, to share with whom I please"
People
list of attendees with contact info
Comments (6)
Dec 07, 2005
Bill Crosbie says:
Call for robust RSS support this is an excellent start. It was one of the option...Call for robust RSS support - this is an excellent start. It was one of the options in the Tool Development Exercise. We opted to build a data management tool instead. There is a a group looking to build a more robust rss tool. Jeff Beemman's News BOF is really about building a more robust RSS tool.
Dec 07, 2005
Bill Crosbie says:
Interesting I've had 3 IMs from students verifying that we do have class tonight...Interesting - I've had 3 IMs from students verifying that we do have class tonight. I really like being connected with my students in this immediate way. It makes it easier to set up a collaborative classroom dynamic.
Dec 07, 2005
Sean Keesler says:
Here is a link to the Educause survey results that demonstrate that there is a l...Here is a link to the Educause survey results that demonstrate that there is a lot of variability amongst students familiarity with technology in the classroom. Some particiants in this discussion believed that all students are ready for the types of social technologies we talked about today.
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=666&ID=EDU04106&bhcp=1
Dec 07, 2005
Sean Keesler says:
I heard discussion after the session about needing to "tear walls down". I think...I heard discussion after the session about needing to "tear walls down". I think that there is a sense that social computing tools should not be incorporated into the enterprise solution. Flick'r, del.icio.us, etc. are out there and should provide rss feeds that we can just aggregate with a Sakai tool (where is it?). I would add that some type of tags may be "enterprise worthy" and may need to be managed by the institution. Such an example may be the goals of the University or a program. By tagging class activities and student work with these "Enterprise tags", students may be able to present there evidence of learning.
Dec 07, 2005
David Hong says:
Here is a link to the study we conducted on Berkeley freshmen (Here is a link to the study we conducted on Berkeley freshmen (http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/ikids/freshquest/). The study is still ongoing and if you interested in learning more, please contact Megan Finn at SIMS.
Dec 07, 2005
Todd Richmond says:
pick your favorite buzz phrase: learnercentric, integrated solution, proactive p...pick your favorite buzz phrase: learner-centric, integrated solution, proactive paradigms (bonus points if you can name the Simpson's episode that uses that term), etc. imho they are all just rehashed analog ideas that have little or no relevance in a digital age.
Ok...maybe that is a bit harsh. But these are desperate times. I think higher ed is on the verge of collapse, and it is being accelerated by digital tools rather than saved by them. "Learning" is finding its own way, and the kids that are "growing up digital" find them on their own. The ones that we create are not what they're interested in. We can either co-opt the tools they use and ruin them for them, or lightly aggregate the content that they use and reuse and try to leverage that.
My 9 year old is who we should be thinking about. Well, not him in general, but hopefully you get my drift. It seems as though we are designing all of this stuff for us...the old farts, not the kids who are "born digital." This is really hard, but we have to get this right. We're at a tipping point, and if we try and shove a square peg (100 year old educational institution design) into a digital hole, we're toast.
Not that I'm alarmist or anything. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the owners, editors, or anyone with half a brain. Void where prohibited. Your mileage may vary.