Designing Social learning

Over this past weekend an assignment was issued in my ITEC-544 course effectively asking what is required in order to design effective social learning. After much though and deliberation I came up with 2 key ideas which I believe to be of the utmost importance in regard to social learning design. In the constant effort to save time I have decided to include what I wrote for class in the blog post bellow rather than rewrite what has already been written. When designing for social learning one must do numerous things in order to not only get the message across but also make the material take root, and grow. That being said one of the most important things to take into account in designing social learning is the Audience. One can identify the audience by first looking at the type of people who are interested in the material you are discussing. For example, If your teaching the best practices for car sales than chances are your audience is outgoing. Given that you can design your social learning to be geared more intensely on interaction. If you are teaching individuals about algorithmic design than chances are they will need some time to get comfortable in their surroundings. Forcing this type of person in to a social learning situation to soon would simply close there minds to any further learning that may have taken place. Another thing that must betaken into account is Age. If you are designing social learning for people over the age of 50 than you may want to consider a more tempered social learning approach. This is simply due to the fact that people of this age did not learn by interaction with others as much as they did by a lecture style of learning. Oppositely people of a younger age will most likely be used to leaning socially and thus a more intense social learning module can be implemented. Once again, There are many other things that must be done in order to design social learning these are just 2 different things i decided to discuss.

Today's Lecture and Moodle

In today's lecture we had a very interesting speaker by the name Felicia Collins. Her power point presentation was directed at the use of Moodle under the context of online course taking. The presentation mainly focusing on her use of the software for elementary education. Before delving into what she discussed I first want to provide clarification as to what Moodle is. In its simplest form Moodle is an open source software used for the management of online courses. Felicia discussed some of the software's numerous add-ons which where all focused on making the running of the class smother and more natural. The lecture also briefly discussed some of the hosting options that teachers had for Moodle. These options included hosting on a personally owned sever or hosting through various companies. The intent was to also discuss the IT aspect of Moodle but, ironically enough, she had server credential issues. She then followed up her lecture by highlighting some interesting methods she used Moodle for in her classes. The one question that I felt was asked, but never answered, is as follows. Given the fact that Moodle is open source, which means support for the software is not guaranteed, than why would teachers use it? The problem I believe arises with an open source learning management system lies with support. When a corporation chooses to use a Linux/Unix distribution on their own systems they have numerous programmers and IT staff in place to take care of unforeseen issues. In addition to that fact some large corporations even develop their own Linux/Unix distributions. With that being said how does a teacher fix these issues, which will arise, and furthermore how does a teacher explain that to parents.

Learning through Social Media (FaceBook)

Throughout this fall semester I plan to have almost all my blogs focus on using social media to teach. With that being said I have decided to briefly asses some of the benefits and drawbacks of Facebook for learning. We all know that Facebook is an extremely popular social media site where people from all over the world can talk, post pictures, post videos, discuss issues, join causes and just chat with friends. However what most people don't realize is how useful Facebook can be for teaching. Facebook can be used to easily connect with students, given the fact most people have one. Once connected instructors can post questions and request that students collaborate together virtually to answer them. This simple request fosters conversation and interest in the topic even after students have left the formal learning environment. Facebook also has a plethora of apps developed for it which can benefit the learner. An example of one such features is Google Docs, which allows for students and instructors to share, collaborate and comment on course documents in an electronic format. These things are just a small number of the ways an instructor could use Facebook for learning. As stated above I will continue to discuss social media and learning throughout this semester so keep in tune for next weeks post.