Abramson, T. (2008). Social Networking Tools. Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems

Abramson, T. (2008). Social networking tools. Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems, 22(1), 3-4.

From the Desk of the Executive Editor

Social Networking Tools

Gertrude (Trudy) Abramson

The Technology

Web 1.0 refers to the technology that began with Netscape in 1995 also called the World Wide Web (WWW or web). Users would link to the web for a variety of services that included research, shopping and entertainment - a collection of resources analogous to a college campus with its own shopping mall. It offered text and images, music and voice, animation and video but it was all one way – from the user to the source. Web 2.0, the second generation, is a two way technology; the label is credited to Tim O’Reilly (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html). The descriptors associated with it most often are online collaboration, information sharing, and social networking. Users can change that which they see and hear and, in that way, contribute to the internet. The most optimistic visions have people from all over the world building new and better kinds of knowledge together.

Like any technology, there are tools that make it all possible. A blog, a combination of web and log, is an online journal with opportunities for readers to comment. The comments appear at the bottom of the posting with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom. It is a linear arrangement that precludes real discussion.

A wiki, named for the Hawaiian word for quick, is a website that a reader may change through additions, deletions or modifications. It is hailed as the tool for mass collaborative authoring.

A podcast is a sound file that captures voice or music easily played back through handheld devices or a computer. Unlike the first two tools described, there is no implicit interactivity. A vodcast (video on demand) is the equivalent of a podcast with video.

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is an XML file that makes it possible for users to receive notice of items that may interest them through a reader. It is something like a customized Reader’s Digest of the internet.

Not to be overlooked are the social networking sites (SNS) such as Face book, Friendster, and classmates.com, where people share profiles, opinions, pictures and just about everything else that translates to a digital mode. A lifetime ago, in July 1993, before Mosaic became a commercial product called Netscape and the world wide web was born, Peter Steiner published a cartoon in The New Yorker 69(20), p. 61 with the caption, “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” The picture featured a dog sitting at a computer keyboard in conversation with another dog sitting near the chair. Despite all the protective devices established by the SNSs, representation of oneself, one’s business or one’s reason for participation is easily disguised.

The Technology as Educational Resource

Readers are referred back to the editorial in volume 21, number 2 (Digital Toys and Learning Tools) in which cautious hope was shared that web 2.0 tools would bring great benefit to education at all levels. After more than a year of reading articles, creating annotations, networking, and building a research base of relevant applications, the time had come to join the bandwagon. To that end, my doctoral course on teaching and learning online, Instruction Delivery Systems, was updated to include experimentation with the new tools as devices to improve teaching and learning. With the awareness that the sample size was too small to form generalizations, findings are reported below.

The program delivery format requires participants to meet on-campus for five, four hour sessions during a single week and then disperse for 21 weeks of online collaborative learning for each course. During the collaborative portion, everyone gets a chance to facilitate an online lesson planned with Gagne’s Events of Instruction (http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_3.htm and Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning (http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html) and to participate as a learner in several of the lessons. This winter’s iteration required the use of at least one web 2.0 tool within the learning process. The tool was supposed to be used, at a minimum, within the lesson parts that introduced the new content and provided guidance to learners. WebCT, the primary online learning environment, remained the classroom setting and each participant was assigned a discussion space, as home-base for his lesson.

To get the ball rolling, I set up a blog (http://drtrudyw2008.blogspot.com/). The first few postings mandated student comments and full sets were forthcoming. It was difficult to follow the flow of conversation, and some remarks were added to the wrong postings. A post with optional comments brought forth none until one participant came to the rescue after a long silence. To see what would happen, there were no restrictions limiting responders to the class; that is, no usernames or passwords were required to post to the blog. No one who should not have been there found his way in although there are many publicly available blogs that discuss issues similar to those posted. It did not take long to conclude that a blog has educational value but not as a collaborative development tool. The tool is nice, the learning curve is minimal; we will find good reasons to blog.

Here is what was observed during the nine weeks of online, interactive teaching and learning. A few participants chose to use more than one but overwhelmingly, the tool of choice was the wiki. Since we were based in WebCT and its discussion board meets the criteria for collaborative workspace and web 2.0, many of the lessons contained redundancies with postings on the wiki and on WebCT and most created confusion for the students. Interestingly, no one complained about the confusion or the volume of extra effort invested as teacher and as learner.

The initial experience was a success according to participant reflections. Most were satisfied that their lessons went well, that they had incorporated the web 2.0 tools successfully and enhanced lesson delivery and mastery. They graded one another in equally glowing terms. One thing was clear: everyone went the full mile to support his peers, to excuse absences and to explain away technical difficulties. A second item of agreement was that tool mastery was not overly time consuming or frustrating. The greatest area of frustration reported had to do with access.

As professor, my preliminary assessment was somewhat more restrained. In almost all cases, the focus of the lesson shifted from the subject matter to the tool. The teachers and students were so busy tweaking the wikis and posting to the blogs that everything else paled in comparison.

The objective of the experience was to experience what it felt like to be on both ends of the distant classrooms in order to appreciate the greater environment. I had hoped that the final papers about online teaching and on online learning, that combined a review of the literature with lessons learned, would prove that much more had been learned than I surmised. As per the posted syllabus (http://www.scis.nova.edu/~abramson/DCTE7602008.doc), this was the tenth time the course was taught. Comparing past and current classes, the papers about teachers and teaching were not much different but the papers about learners and learning were. Elements of the learning process, attributes of online learners, and the fact that lessons are about subject matter mastery, were lost in the enthusiasm for using the new tools. We shall continue to integrate new technology tools into online lessons but how we go about doing so will require modification.

Last Words

Moving away from personal, anecdotal reporting, a few observations about social networking tools are in order. When web-based learning was introduced with tools such as WebCT and Blackboard, an era began in which education terms such as constructivism and collaborative learning were heralded. Teachers were relegated to the sidelines where they became facilitators and learning occurred through interaction with teachers, books, internet resources and peers. With web 2.0, discussion and collaboration are taking over. The distant learner is no longer isolated; he is connected virtually to his peers with whom he can build new knowledge.

The online learning environment makes people happy as they come together virtually to chat ad infinitum, tests are abandoned and grading is based upon collaborative projects and performances. Competence is established anecdotally and experience is certified based upon time spent. Tool use is replacing subject matter competence. Global reality demands highly educated Americans with excellent critical thinking skills and deep knowledge bases. Are we moving in this direction as technology becomes less expensive and the tools become easier to use or is an entire generation of learners being left behind?