This document discusses the use of social media tools and applications in higher education. It addresses why these tools should be used, including conforming to labor demands and passing knowledge to future generations. It also discusses what social media can offer at the curricular level, including blended learning and intermediate distance activities. Pedagogical impacts are addressed, including focus on single units and potential engagement issues. The roles of learning, teaching, and technology are examined, as well as questions around framing social contexts and whether learning management systems or personal learning environments are better suited.

1. Social media tools and
applications in Higher Education
Luís Pedro | Carlos Santos | U. Aveiro | ECIU Glasgow 14-03-08

2. Context
★ Multimedia in Education Masters
Course
★ Training of active, critical and reflexive
professionals/researchers
★ In-service professionals, mostly
teachers

3. Why?
★ Conforming learning roadmaps with
strong labour commitments
★ Message inheritance to future
generations of ICT using
★ Flexible learning time management

4. What? (at curricular level)
★ B-learning offer
★ Sequential curricular structure
★ Face-to-face sessions at beginning and
end of each curricular unit
★ Intermediate activities occur at a
distance

5. Curricular time organisation model

6. What (bridging...)
★ Curricular decisions have sound
pedagogical repercussions
★ Concentration on a single curricular
unit at a given moment in time | work
overload, intense information flow,
informed and shared group decision-
making work
★ Potential engagement, communication
and learning problem

7. What (pedagogically)
★ Technology
★ But for what?
★ Learning about technologies or
learning with technologies?
★ What message are we passing to these
students?
★ What message will they pass for their
students?

8. What is happening?
★ Globalisation (what is where? what is
now? what is how? what is who?)
★ Epistemological shifts (temporary
nature of knowledge)
★ Ontological shifts (not only a consumer,
but a prosumer)
★ Communication tools and services

9. Learning and technology 101
★ It´s not about technology, it’s about
people
★ Web 1.0 | Web 2.0 | Web 3.0 or
Semantic Web
★ 3 interacting and mutually influencing
vectors: learning, teaching
methodology, technology
★ It´s up to us to dynamically shape this
triangle

10. Web x.0

11. Is it or isn’t it?
★ Framing social context
★ Is the frame part of the picture?
★ Situated learning, contextual learning,
social constructivism...

12. Why?
★ Sharing and collaborating nature of
work
★ Shared and negotiated meanings
★ Communication | peer and teacher-
student
★ Openness | major social interaction

13. What?
★ Sharing, interaction and participation
continuous flow
★ Learning communities
★ Social media tools and applications

14. Sufficiently mine technological solutions?
★ LMS | It is so flexible, wasn’t it?
★ Are students sufficiently in control?
★ Are these platforms sufficiently open?
★ Is it sufficiently easy to integrate
content?
★ Are they sufficiently empowering and
engaging tools?

15. The Web by Tim Berners-Lee
★ “The basic [idea] of the Web is that [of] an
information space through which people can
communicate, but communicate in a special
way: communicate by sharing their
knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just
that it should be a big browsing medium. The
idea was that everybody would be putting
their ideas in, as well as taking them out.”
http://www.w3.org/1999/04/13-tbl.html (1999)

16. Quick survey
★ Who has a Web presence besides
institutional ones?
★ Who had put new information in past
week? Past month? Past year?

17. The Web 2.0 by Stephen Downes
★ “... What was happening was that major parts
of the Web were acquiring the properties of
communication networks, the sort of
networks found to exist (albeit on a much
smaller scale) in the physical world. And that
the Web itself was being transformed from
what was called “the Read Web” to “Read-
Write Web” in accordance with Tim Berners-
Lee’s original vision. Proponents of this new,
evolving Web began calling it Web 2.0 and in
short order the trend became a movement.”
http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=29-1 (2006)

18. The Web 2.0 by Michael Wesch and...
The Machine is Us/ing Us (2007) A Vision of Students Today (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Kansas State University ...by his students

19. Web 2.0 in MMEd
★ Previous knowledge and experience
with Web 2.0 tools... very low
★ Previous effective use of LMS... low
★ Students: “Even more tools to
manage?”
★ Expecting some negative reactions...

20. Learn by doing/Hands-on approach
★ Start with basic concepts related to Web
2.0
★ Show most common tools (blogs, wikis,
social bookmarking,...)
★ Objective: learn how easy it is to use
Web 2.0 tools
★ Result: become Web 2.0 contributors

21. How to understand it?
★ feel it first...
★ Promote a good experience for first time users (a teacher’s job)
★ Engage students in collaborative learning activities designed to
take advantage of Web 2.0
★ ... reflect and discuss about it next
★ Be curious
★ Learn to find the right tools and strategies for specific needs

22. blogs

23. wiki

24. social bookmarking

25. student tools
?
?
?
?
? ? ?

26. syndication and aggregation
the old and slow way
the new and fast way
images from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU (2007)

27. LMS vs PLE
Scott Wilson (2005) - http://zope.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20050125170206

28. How does your presence look like?
★ Where are you? Who are you? Do you
share common interests with me?
★ Where are the non-verbal components
of social interaction in Web scenarios?
★ Synchronous and distributed nature of
interaction

29. Second Life
★ MUVE - MultiUser Virtual
Environment
★ Social and economic interaction
★ It´s not someone else’s world and
someone else’s imagination

30. Second Life and Learning
★ Formal learning activities: difficult to
monitor, boring, possible cognitive
overload due to number of interactions
★ Informal learning activities: massive set
of interaction tools, participation and
responsibility promoters

31. Informal activities in SL
★ Invited specialist (as in with Warwick
presentation on Wednesday)
★ Blurred roles (student, teacher,
specialists)
★ Management and metalearning skills
(CTEd subject)

32. SL Informal activities

33. SL UA Island

34. SL social and scientific activities

35. Conclusions
★ Learning spaces: closed and carefully
managed or open and flexible?
★ Attitudinal and cultural or
technological skills?
★ University 2.0 Portal (action-research)
★ and... how to use it in Bologna context?

36. thank you
★ Luís Pedro
★ email: lpedro@ua.pt
★ blog: http://nitratodocaos.blogs.ca.ua.pt/
★ SL: Zes Garfield
★ twitter: lfpedro
★ Carlos Santos
★ email: carlossantos@ua.pt
★ blog: http://napraia.blogs.ca.ua.pt/
★ SL: Carlosss Lukas
★ twitter: csantos