Although the Colab was created specifically to teach social media theory by the use of social media, and the Social Media Classroom includes resource lists, syllabi, and , lesson plans focused on that specific subject, it was intended from the beginning to serve as an all-purpose tool for educators who seek to use social media in pursuit of a more participative pedagogy. That’s where the community of practice comes in. We’re devoting an instance of the Colab to converations among educational practitioners that we hope to grow into a self-sustaining community around the use of social software in pedagogy in the broadest sense—any subject, any age level, any institution. We welcome participants who want to learn more, share best practices, meet others who share an interest in social media in education. The hope of those who created the initial Colab and accompanying curricular and support material is that this effort, and the tools we provide, will inspire others to vastly expand and deepen our resource repository, add their syllabi and lesson plans, discuss with and learn from others. We’ll start with Forums, where the early participants can meet and discuss what we’d like to do together, and the wiki, where we’ve seeded some fundamental resources and invite others to add new ones. If there is interest, we can add blogs, chat, RSS, social bookmarking, microblogging and video. The Colab is based on Drupal, a free and open source Content Management System, and we hope to grow ties with others in that community who are interested in working with educators to co-develop new tools and improve existing ones.
To join the community click here
Maggie Verster on 02 Jun 09The Internet provides unique opportunities for educators to access, use, modify, and share educational materials. Open Educational Resources (OER), as these free materials are called, can include "full courses, textbooks, streaming videos, exams, software, and any other materials or techniques supporting learning"http://www.hewlett.org/oer . The OER movement shows considerable potential to reduce cost, improve quality and widen access to educational opportunities. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 to turn tomorrow's promise for OER into today's reality for teachers, lecturers, and trainers around the world. WikiEducator is an international community of educators committed to the development of OER at all levels of the education system. WikiEducators are returning to the core value of education, namely to share knoweldge freely. In this session, experienced WikiEducators will share what the concept of "OER" and explore ideas on how to get the most from this rewarding project.
