BuddyPress is a plug-in for WordPress that adds social networking features like user profiles, activity streams, private messaging, and groups. It allows WordPress to function as both a content publishing and social networking platform. Some schools are using BuddyPress-powered WordPress installations to simplify access to course information and online discussions. Examples include Wooster Voices at the College of Wooster and CUNY Commons at the City University of New York.
1. Where should I look for that?
Simplifying access to community and information.
SALT Conference - March 3, 2010
Helmut Doll
Department of Instructional Technology
Bloomsburg University
hdoll@bloomu.edu
http://iit.bloomu.edu/doll/
4. What web and social tools do you/your
organization use today?
Blackboard or similar LMS Twitter
Blog Others?
Wiki
Other web sites
Delicious
Facebook
8. 2 .0
b 30
e be
w s st
0 ck
1 i we
o p p ed b
T uc 2.0
at
ion site
s fo
r
9. “Whe
re wa
s I su
ppos
ed to
find
that?
”
“Most of my students don't really know how to use much of Blackboard. Sure, they can
find course documents or they can check their grades. But they don't know how to use
the discussion board, they don't know how to participate effectively in an online
discussion, they don't know how to use the "online classroom" function.”
ue tod ay?”
t his w as d
not k now
“ I did
11. 10 Predictions for Online Learning in '10
• ‘3. Consolidated services/one learning platform. Companies will look more
toward single, central repositories to manage their learning initiatives,
streamline, and standardize training and development across their
organizations, develop "learning cultures," and provide their professionals
with a single point of access to their company's "university portal," says
Englund. Asking professionals to manage four or five vendor accounts, then
piecing together disparate completion records, has become outdated.’
12. Another reason:
mobile users
• Have slower connections
• Need simplified interfaces
• Have different usage model
• want quick access to the
news
13. How can we simplify access to information and
social/communiation tools in education?
16. EduGlu - started
2006
• Group around/with D’Arcy
Norman that wanted to address
the problem:
“a person publishes a bunch of
stuff, and all they need to do is
pull it into a course-based
resource”
• Project started on eduforge
• Investigation of existing
software or combinations
17. Features an ‘eduglu’ system should have
• Aggregation of feeds
• Social rating system
• Groups
• Tagging
(as listed by D’Arcy Norman)
26. WordPress
• A blog/publishing system
• Hosted (http://wordpress.com)
• Self-hosted (http://wordpress.org)
• Open-source
• Extensible using plug-ins, widgets and themes
27. WordPress mu
• Modification of WordPress
• Multiple blogs in one installation
• Will become part of WordPress 3
• Examples
• http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/
• http://edublogs.org/
• http://blog.davelester.org/2008/10/28/wordpress-multi-user-on-college-
campuses/
29. What is BuddyPress?
• A plug-in for WordPress (and WordPress mu)
• Adds activity stream for personal and group activity including postings,
comments,...
• Registration system (LDAP possible to use organization user db)
• Groups with connection to group blogs, postings
• Friends
• Messaging
• Discussion forums
30. Advantages of this system
• Combines social networking and content publishing
• Open-source license
• Extensibility of WordPress
• Large developer community
• Similarity with facebook News
32. Examples: Wooster Voices, CUNY commons
• http://voices.wooster.edu/
• Courses as groups, e.g. http://voices.wooster.edu/groups/geol-105-natural-
hazards
• http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/
33. WordPress as a Learning Management System
• WPMu Development for Education. http://dev.wpmued.org/
• http://tametheweb.com/2009/08/31/piloting-buddypress-as-a-lms/
• http://prestidigitation.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2010/01/16/open-lms/
• http://dev.wpmued.org/
• http://wpmu.org/wordpress-as-a-learning-management-system-move-over-
blackboard/
• http://andremalan.net/2009/08/dev-wpmued-is-live/
• http://wordcamped.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
• http://prestidigitation.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2010/01/31/alternate-worlds-
part-2-the-class-begins/ (not buddypress, but course run through customized
wordpress)
Previously students got all they needed from
- the blackboard/teacher lectures
- text book
- maybe a web site
icon source www.iconspedia.com/ icon/blackboard-4711.html
Now we ask them to check the class site, the blog, twitter feeds,...
An example from the corporate world. In order to stay competitive, all the social networking and web 2.0 tools have to be incorporated into the learning environment
Original email:
eLearning Technology - SharePoint Social Learning Experience
SharePoint Social Learning Experience
I had a great conversation last week that sparked an early stage idea for what I think would be a wonderful way for learning and development organizations to leverage SharePoint better. 
HP Web 2.0 for Marketing – Social Learning Experience
The concept is probably easiest to understand by considering what HP did around their course on Web 2.0 for Marketing.  You can find more on this by going to the LearnTrends – SharePoint in Corporate Learning Recordings.
The basic concept was that HP’s learning organization wanted to help their marketing professionals get up to speed on the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.  Of course, that’s an interesting learning problem in that the answer around “implications” is not defined. 
The L&D organization created a social learning experience that brought together 60 marketing professionals from across the organization.  They established a goal of having the group produce a summary of what they found and what Web 2.0 could mean for the organization.  In many ways, this was a facilitated work task more than a learning experience.  The L&D organization provided some instruction on the basics for how the sessions would operate and some information around Web 2.0, but a lot of the effort was discovery by the marketing professionals themselves.
In the picture below, you can see some of the mechanisms they used:
Social Bookmarks to share resources they found
Discussion Boards to ask questions and have discussions.
A blog that helped spark conversations around key topics.
A wiki that served as a repository for the resources they collected.
Virtual class sessions to share what they were finding
Learners were encouraged to do quick screen capture movies to explain their thoughts around particular uses of Web 2.0 technologies and share with the group.
The results were pretty incredible for HP.  And it’s exactly this kind of facilitated social learning experience where the result is somewhat a work objective that makes a lot of sense.
SharePoint Social Learning Experience
Based on the above description, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with what I think would be a fantastic learning opportunity for L&D organizations who want to understand what it means to Use SharePoint in their organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions.
The idea would be to:
Set a goal to produce a presentation and set of recommendations to be presented to senior L&D management
Get a cross section of L&D professionals and possibly others within the business
Setup an environment that will be used both as a sandbox and as a support for the learning experience
Introduce SharePoint (and/or other technologies) to participants
Facilitate activities and discussions that ultimately lead towards the presentation and recommendations
Of course, there’s nothing preventing variants of this being done across multiple smaller organizations.  And certainly there are lots of external professionals that likely would make sense to either help make this happen or include as third party experts as part of the learning experience.  See Learning Community, Peers and Outside Experts for more description of possible design elements.
I also think this is a great way to help build understanding of social learning within an organization.
I’m hoping to get feedback on this?  Does it make sense as a model?  Are organizations already beyond this or should it actually be a facilitated discussion around learning technologies period, not just SharePoint?  Will it make the most sense as SharePoint 2010 begins to roll out into organizations?
eLearning Technology
Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.
In order to provide the best tools for the students we have increased the complexity of the learning environment a lot. While Bb offers many tools, many colleagues prefer their own selection of tools.
Students have a hard time keeping up with all the separate information sources we provide.
(Main quote from http://reassignedtime.blogspot.com/2010/02/dealing-with-weather.html)
Why is facebook the #2 site in the world? (http://www.alexa.com/topsites 2/26/10)
Besides the social aspects: One page to see everything that is going on!
The importance of this is recognized by the training/learning community. (The quote is not addressing exactly the same issue but it is related).
Shawn Englund, CEO of LearnLive Technologies. http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/training/e3icac65f467d72bd9429240cc6f254d778. 2/23/2010
iGoogle, Netvibes have one screen combining many sources.
http://www.netvibes.com/wesch#Digital_Ethnography
http://bestpracticeforelearning.ning.com/
Image from Darcy Norman’s blog about this: http://www.darcynorman.net/2008/02/16/on-eduglu-part-1-background/
But it should be more than a feed aggregator.
Visual mashup editor, rss feed aggregator with query abilities.
This also goes into the direction of service brokers and the goals mentioned at http://mfeldstein.com/lmos_services_and_service_brokers_part_i/
Buddypress is a plug-in for Wordpress (originally for Wordpress mu, the multi-user/blog version of Wordpress, which will be merged with WP in the 3.0 version).
