Social networking for practice learning

Thorpe, Mary and Greaney, Philip (2009). Social networking for practice learning. In: ICDE 23rd World Conference: Including EADTU Annual Conference, 7-10 Jun 2009, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

URL: http://www.ou.nl/eCache/DEF/80/137.html

Abstract

Tutors from two faculties worked at a distance as members of a project to develop expertise in using social networking tools for practice learning. Tutors learned how touse Delicious, Google Reader, Facebook and FlashMeeting and created newresources located on a project wiki. They designed short teaching scenarios embedding the use of social bookmarking and generated resources to guide other tutors on how to make effective use of RSS feeds for their own updating and knowledge management. The project is funded by the OU Practice Based Professional Learning Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning, and is expanding during 2009 to include members of faculty and a wider group of tutors. This phase of the project is using the Drupal content management system to create a project site that supports both community interaction and creation of new resources. Video and text guidance has been used effectively by a distributed group to develop practical use and understanding of social networking. The project has addressed issues of privacy and effective communication, where face to face training in how to use new tools is not feasible. It represents an imaginative combination of developing new pedagogy and new tool use in tandem.

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