Holistic and Integral Education

Doing IT Differently - C: Social Learning

What will be different at HC in 2008?

C: Social Learning

A number of colleagues have already started using Web 2.0 tools with their students or other educators. A couple of classes were even assessed on their social bookmarking and MySpace pages. A few English students created MySpace pages for fictional characters they were studying and MySpace layout and content was assessed in some Media subjects. The majority of students on campus had MySpace pages.


In 2008 selected social learning (web 2.0) tools will be integrated into learning, teaching and assessment for a large group of students.

• Social Bookmarking - students will be encouraged to keep and share bookmarks online using del.icio.us. The college has already established a number of accounts for some learning areas eg journalism, game design, learning2learn, multimedia
• Research - Google Notebook will be used for making, collating and sharing notes while researching online.
• Journals (Blogs) - students will post to online journals - tagged according to topic and/or assessment criteria - and students will read and comment on other student journals or international blogs. A number of customised services will be provided including Moodle and ELGG - or students can use another service and provide an RSS feed for class aggregation.
• Microblogging - particularly recommended for students engaged in student directed inquiry projects - using Twitter or Jaiku.
• Social Networking - students will be encouraged to establish a digital identity and presence that will get them "hired not fired". Facebook will be the preferred site for linking students on campus and for specialist groups established for some classes. 43 Things may be used by some students to set learning and life goals.

A number of services will be used to aggregate various feeds for students and teachers including Google Reader, Bloglines and ELGG. At this stage there is no extensive use planned for wikis in 2008.

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Labels: assessment, learning, personalisation, teaching

posted by Roger Stack @ 8:32 AM