University & Web 2.0

How social media can help teachers & learners

What do you think when you hear “Web 2.0”?

(Brainstorming)

What are your expectations today?

What to expect today

1. Brainstorming: What is Web 2.0? (15 min)2. What is Web 2.0 / Social Media? Examples in higher education (30 min)3. Why social media? Goals, risks and gains (15 min)

[BREAK 15 min]4. Practice Session (45 min)5. Mash it up! (15 min)

[BREAK 15 min]6. Group discussion: Experiences? (30 min)7. Brainstorming: Web 2.0 in your classroom? (30 min)8. Questions & Answers (15 min)9. Back to 1: What do you think of Web 2.0 now? (15 min)

What is Web 2.0 ?

(Video: Tim O’Reilly)

Three key characteristics:1. the web as a platform2. harness collective intelligence3. user-generated content

What is Web 2.0 ?

Also known as:

• social media• social software• blogs• ‘This stuff for computer freaks’

What makes a service "social" ?

• collaboration• community• sharing• openness

What’s in it for us? Some examples.

A few examples to get us started:

Wikis / Blogs / Flickr / YouTube / Facebook / Twitter

Plus: Some use cases in higher education

Wikis

knowledge transfereasycollaborative+

- time-consuming

Wiki (facts, collaboration)

Wiki: Social Media Classroom

By Howard Rheingold (UC Berkeley, Stanford University):

“The Social Media Virtual Classroom will develop an online community for teachers and students to collaborate and contribute ideas for teaching and learning about the psychological, interpersonal, and social issues related to participatory media.“

Google Docs

knowledge transfereasycollaborativewiki-like, but strong privacy controls

walled garden (kind of)proprietaryhosted in the cloud (data security?)

+

-

Google Docs (documents)

Blogs

great archive‘link love’: Google loves itfoster dialoggreat exposurecomments!

comment might need moderationsmaller groups of authors

+

-

Blog / Weblog (text/links)

Flickr (photos)

knowledge transfereasycollaborativeeasily shared photo libraryself-organizing (tagged) archive

time-consuming limited usefulness

+

-

Flickr (photos)

YouTube

simplevideo-basedhosted (no bandwidth costs)

‘sleazy neighbors’video is time & labor-intensive copyright / intellectual property

+

-

YouTube (videos)

Facebook

privacy controlsreal peoplestrong academic community (FB was founded for Ivy League students)

distractionwalled garden

+

-

Facebook (real people)

Twitter

powerful networking toolvery simpleproduces RSS feed ("hackable")great exposure

privacy issuesrequires a certain culturewhite noise

+

-

Twitter (really short messages)

Twitter in Education

Use cases include:

• communications tool for collaborating researchers• to get students to focus in a concise way on a topic• for conference attendees to discuss topics in a concise manner• strengthens a community feeling• tracking topics (by keyword)• instant, informal feedback• classroom ‚back channel‘• immediate communication with students while not in classroom

Twitter (really short messages)

Video: Twitter in plain English(http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter)

and: RSS (to make it all talk)

RSS pushes information. To your users & students. Example: Podcasts

RSS: Podcasts

RSS (to make it all talk)

RSS also pushes information from one service to another. And another. And another. Mashups

Mashups

Mix information from two or more sources and you get a mashup: Flexible, customizable, basis for an information ecosystem.

Mashups: Google Maps + X

Example: Twittervision

Google Maps + Twitter = Real Time Monitoring (enabled by RSS feeds)

Do we really need this?

Judge for yourself. (I’d say: Yes!)

Goals, risks & gains

What can we expect from Web 2.0?

Goals

• transparency• dialog• community• media competency• collaboration• and…

Goals

…to prepare your students for their future work environment (Benkler 2006 on peer production):

“(…) radically decentralized, collaborative, and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources and outputs among widely distributed, loosely connected individuals (…)”

Risks

Perceived risks:

• loss of authority• high expectations• “who wants to read all that stuff?”

Risks

Realistic risks:

• information overload• privacy!• losing the audience / creating a zombie• liabilities• costs: time-consuming!

Issues

• social media are unordered & messy• tech problems, unstable software• adaption speed: how to keep up?• constant partial attention vs. back channel:

‘are you listening?’

Gains

• constructive dialog• engaging!• transparency• word-of-mouth style promotion• direct feedback• more efficient online• collaboration & teamwork

Why should we do any of this?

Common (but bad) reasons:

• it’s hip & cool• ‘everybody else does it’• someone tells you to

Why should we do any of this?

Better reasons:

• communicate more effectively & efficiently• foster knowledge transfer & learning• increase inter-disciplinary exchange• teach students how to work collaboratively• learn now for future developments

What is needed?

• steady commitment• a culture of sharing and openness• involve the students (and trust them)• lose control (micro-management & social media

don't mix)

Break (10 mins)

Tools (Practice Session)

 

Groups:

1. Blog: Write posts & comment, link to relevant blogshttp://uocsocialmedia.blogspot.com/

2. Twitter.com: Find education Twitterers and follow them3. Wikipedia: Fix Wikipedia UOC entry4. Facebook: Start a UOC Social Media group5. Flickr: Take pictures of participants, upload & tag them

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uocsocial/

Now let’s mash it all up…

…to see how RSS works in action.

Break (10 mins)

Experiences

(please share your impressions!)

How could we use this to improve your classroom experience?

New ideas?

Questions?

Die we meet your expectations today?

References

 • Social Media Classroom, Howard Rheingold: https://socialmediaclassroom.pbwiki.com• Twitter in Education: http://web20teach.blogspot.com/2007/08/twitter-tweets-for-higher-

education.html• Twitter in the Classroom: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2699/a-professors-tips-for-

using-twitter-in-the-classroom• Tim O'Reilly: Was ist Web 2.0? [Video]: http://blogpiloten.de/wie-sag-ichs-meinen-eltern/was-ist-

web-20/• Tim O'Reilly: What is Web 2.0?:

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

License

 Licensed under

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

Thank you!

 Questions & feedback?

My email: peter.bihr@gmail.comMy blog: www.thewavingcat.comResources: http://uocsocialmedia.pbwiki.com/