I had the opportunity to attend this thought provoking discussion at Buzz2010 today. All about the growing place for social media and how we can leverage these tools effectively in our organizations. Follow the conversations at http://www.buzz2010.org/blog/
Increasingly, more folks are flocking to social networking sites to share their information, whereabouts, interests, and day-to-day musings. What does this really mean? An interesting article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Monday suggesting a new fate for email?
As these authors contend, more individuals are using Facebook and Twitter to communicate with friends and family. Have we gone completely digital? What’s happening to face-to-face communication? Is this a good trend or one that brings caution. What does this mean for individuals who may not be able to access the technology medium — what about users who may be blind? Thoughts to ponder.
This is day two at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative 2009 conference where cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch delivered a thought provoking opening feature session. Dr. Wesch teaches a New Literacy Class at Kansas State University.
He first shared his experimentation with using a NetVibes customized portal for his class which included front page locations for Facebook, YouTube, RSS feeds, a place for course links, a twitter feed, a wiki feed and even a location on the wiki for student’s to add and share their notes/perspectives on the course. However, Wesch noted that with all of this “one-stop” customizing for a class portal, he later surmised that students reported that some of these tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, were distracting to the educational content. So, Wesch has moved to a singular wiki portal that he has customized with RSS feeds which bring in the related content.
As he concluded his talk, he posed to all the following questions which are interesting to ponder in this transforming digital age:
What are the basic literacy skills?
What am I really teaching?
Is my teaching a hindrance to learning?
What use are they, what is education for, how should I deliver my content, and should I deliver content?
What is learning and why. Are these walls necessary?
Upon closing he asked, “are we preparing our students to create in this world?
As I prepared for our technology component of the staff retreat next week, I sent out a request through my twitter account asking for help. The question posed, “does anyone know of a comparison chart on web 2.0 technologies?”. For many of my colleagues, as I suspect others, this is an overwhelming topic and full of terminology they’ve never seen. My twitter request however yielded some good information and a great resource. Several of these are noted below and worth perusing, considering, and making your top web sites for next year!
Top 25 Tools Every Professional Should Have in Their Toolbox
http://c4lpt.co.uk/Top100Tools/toolset.html
Top Web Tools for 2008
http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/top100.html
Top Web Tools for 2009
http://c4lpt.co.uk/Top100Tools/toolset.html
