onlinelearning

That’s not so much an oversight as a hesitation, with many institutions still debating whether to adopt social networking capabilities of their own or grit their teeth and take the plunge into Facebook, with all the messiness and potential privacy concerns that would imply.

privacy and authentication sought by institutions.

ult, Schools, upends the traditional application framework. Rather than make it available to anyone with a Facebook account

MacNeil was already using his own website to post assignments, useful links and samples of work in his communications-technology class, so Facebook seemed a logical next step.

Looking through Vaughan's class Facebook page, there are several discussion topics being debated daily and students -- old and new -- posting messages by the hour.

"It wasn't that it was any better than sending an e-mail or anything like that, it was that they seemed more willing to accept that media over the other ones,'' says MacNeil.

I agree with Sarah that using social networking tools for a course increases the amount of interaction and probably encourages more assessment of how people interact together. I

I wonder for people who already use these tools if the community of a course would really feel any different than the community of their friends.

f we’re trying to create lifelong learners, then using social networking tools for learning might be more effective. It has a stronger intrinsic context for interacting with others than a more artificial classroom environment. Practice that is as close to real life as possible is more effective, so practicing using tools for learning in the real world should make it easier for students to transition out of the course and continue using the tools.

he survey found Facebook has become a really important social ‘glue’ to help build student communities, but that it’s role for teaching purposes is limited.

he also talked about how Facebook brings together different groups of people from different aspects of someone’s life. This theme came up later in the day, when we talked about a private or personal self as opposed to a more professional face.

Online social networking is now so deeply embedded in the lifestyles of tweens and teens that it rivals television for their attention...Nine- to 17-year-olds report spending almost as much time using social networking services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens, that amounts to about 9 hours a week on social networking activities,compared to about 10 hours a week watching TV.

any students engage in highly creative activities on social networking sites...Overall, an astonishing 96 percent of students with online access report that they have ever used any social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities

Eighty-one percent say they have visited a social networking Web site within the past three months and 71 percent say they use social networking tools at least weekly.

The background to the paper overviews the importance of the creation of an adaptable context that the learner creates to support and retain their own learning. They note ” It is not about learning design it is all about learning environment design”. By letting learning emerge from rich inquiry, collaboration and publication tools, learners are able to play active roles in the creation and sustenance of their own learning contexts. These skills, the contexts and the products of course do not end when the course LMS site is closed, but rather become life long learning attributes and capacity. Thus the creation of a rich learning environment that the student creates, owns and continuous to build with is the major learning outcome, the specific knowledge domain outcomes are useful but less important outcomes in a life long learning context.

hink that it doesn’t really work the way I thought it could. A part of the reasons why it didn’t work out where technical ones, but the most important ones are deeper issues