Enzo Silva blog » social

Reusable and Shareable Learning Objects

enzofsilva — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:56:23 +0000

When we normally think of reusable learning objects we think of reusing them in other traditional learning settings, be it a chapter of a student manual or a video used in a different e-learning course (yes, e-learning is traditional, isn’t it?).
When we think of modular, reusable learning objects we have to think of them as not just reusable in a traditional sense, but imagine them as shareable learning objects. Media elements to be spread in different social media sites by us (designers/developers) and learners themselves. For instance, when creating a job aid about a process or concept, make it attractive, publish it on different social media sites like Pinterest (the new fad now) so others can also share it. Or perhaps you design a video that can not only be used in a course, but also shared via YouTube. Those are simple examples, but we have to think of learning as a continuum, not just self-contained experiences.
Don’t just design self-contained experiences, design pieces of a whole that can also function separately. Pieces that can be reused, shared in different social networks.
Don’t just design learning media, design potentially social media.

Social Networks Around the World – Trends in Social Media

enzofsilva — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:17:55 +0000

This map published on TechCrunch recently just makes me wonder if we are doing the right thing when using social networking to reach our customers, learners, partners.

It seems to me most of our “campaigns” in social media tend to focus on Twitter, Facebook and social networks that are popular here in the U.S. With an increasingly global audience, should we start to reconsider where and how we offer our content out there?

Map of Social Networks in the Worlds

GlobalWebIndex.net’s Survey:

View more presentations from Tom Smith.

A visual representation of how Internet users actually use the social media can be found here.

Watch Le Web Live December 10 2009

enzofsilva — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:29:25 +0000

About Le Web:

“The real time web is taking the world by storm! Twitter has grown exponentially in one year with an extremely simple service that does only one thing: keep you in touch with what your friends are doing, in real time. Facebook entirely redesigned its most important assets, its home page and opened its feed to third parties. Given the growth of the Twitter and Facebook ecosystems with thousands of applications and new uses, startups as well all major players are adapting their services to compete in this environment. There was the static web, the social web and now here comes a new web: the real-time web.”

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV

Social Media Revolution – Evolution

enzofsilva — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:40:37 +0000

Let’s think about the impact these emerging technologies can have on Education, on learning, on other fields (not just marketing)… not sure “revolution” is the term, but definitely an “evolution” of the way people communicate. Technology is more than ever shortening distances, including the distance between learners and content, subject matter experts AND, maybe more importantly: other learners, creating best practice communities in a matter of clicks…

Ma.gnolia and The Backup Lesson

enzofsilva — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:51:25 +0000

Social bookmarking site and community Ma.gnolia‘s recent backup crisis serves as a sour reminder of the importance of backing up data being it one’s local computer’s documents or website databases.
Backup resources are now cheaper than ever (it is possible to get terabytes of storage on external hat drives for less than $200) and more mobile (with the recent wave of online backup services like iBackup, iDrive, Mozy, Carbonite, Dropbox, and these are just a few) …

Having lost my hard drives in the past (not a pleasant experience) I now see no excuse not to have a backup plan and maybe a backup pan B for your precious data…

Ma.Gnolia’s situation got so bad that they even started to recommend other social bookmarking services (Diigo):

If you’re looking for a place to start a new collection, I think Diigo is a good option to check out for its groups, cross-service posting features and attentive staff.

Learner vs Participant

enzofsilva — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:36:16 +0000

The term learner bears a sense of a passive individual that is merely a receptacle for Instruction and information. In light of this assumption, one would presume that another word or another view of the “learning as a process” to take place. Most everyone has some to contribute to this process and, aside from situations in which individuals need instruction for imediate information, for more long-term knowledge retention learning needs to be views not only as a process but as a participatory process. Even if an individual will go through “instruction” alone, ideally, the learning process starts then and continues as this individual partakes in conversations, formal and informal situations in which that knowledge is applied, learners new nuances to that information from others, funds new applications for that information as s/he collaborated with other “learners” (please read all you can about Constructivist epistemology and some applied theories such as social learning).
Therfore, if learning is an ongoing participatory process, maybe those in the field of Education should see the learners as “participants” in learning constantly together. Not that this is a call for a different word, bit for the view that consructivists have had for a while and that now social media makes it easier to achieve by creating participatory environments.

Facebook is the Fastest-Growing Social Network

enzofsilva — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:26:00 +0000

Very interesting post on TechCrunch based on Comscore data that show the growth rate of Facebook and other social networks. Facebook being the winner in this race.

What about Learning? If we want to reach learners where they are we need to, of course, know where they are and also start developing to these platforms. Real learning in social media goes beyond delivering learning content on Facebook, it is about promoting user-generated content and sharing. Interaction amongst learners is a key factor in how learning takes place and these social networks offer great tools to mediate this interaction and make it easy. Netgeners or “Millenials” grow used to this type of technology (although I think the research on Millenials is debatable because I think the characteristics attributed have to do more with attitude and opportunity of exposure to technology than a matter of age and the year an individual is born) I do think we need to consider a shift in eLearning based on the new expectations people have regarding receiving, processing, creating and sharing content. Social networks offer a great insight into how people expect to interact with one another, providing a great approach to Constructivist learning…

Metcalf’s Law and Semantic Web?

enzofsilva — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:12:00 +0000

Interesting post trying to adapt Metcalf’s Law to the Semantic Web context. They are looking for feedback.

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/rdf_and_metcalf_s_law

Social Games Even on Consoles – Learning Opportunities?

enzofsilva — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 03:17:35 +0000

I’ve realized that I add questions as titles to my posts very often. Maybe because I am not sure exactly what I am saying is like what everyone else is saying, perhaps because I want this blog to be more of a dialog. A social interaction…

This is what has occurred to me lately: game developers want their gaming experiences to be social ones. More and more you see game website like MiniClip, one of my favorites, creating social networks around their already fun products.

What does adding social networking features around games offer? Well, first of all, it is my belief and some of my findings that the Net Generation (yes I have been reading a lot about this subject lately) … well, the Net Generation is a generation that enjoys social interaction, doing things in groups. So, adding features that let them network with friends and play with people they know allows them to “share the joy” of playing the game, challenging their friends. Yahoo, for instance, has been offering online multiplayer games for a long time on their games pages (I love the pool game, by the way). The difference here is that many developers are improving the networking capabilities, allowing the players to, for example, have customized avatars, email friends, challenge friends to certain games, share those games on Facebook, embed them on blogs, etc., all from the main website once they log in.

Something intriguing is that having “amazing” graphics doesn’t really matter that much because players enjoy the games and the social interaction. It is an era in which people value more the social the the actual “lone wolf” immersion of the first generations Playstation games.

The interesting thing is that this idea of social gaming is spreading to game consoles too. The Nintendo Wii is a great example of that. Players can add their friends’ Wiis to their and actual email addresses to their address books and message them from the Wii console itself (no need for a CD or anything, this is built into the Console itself). Users can share their Wii numbers and Miis (Wii avatars) with people they know and play games together. They can also share their Wii information with people they don’t know through an unnofficial website called ShareMiis (this exemplifies how much people want to connect with one another). Players can also play “guessing” the most popular answers to polls on the “Everyone Votes” channel (players can also submit their own ideas for questions to be asked on a regional or world level).

Why am I going on and on about social games? Because this trend has to tell us something about learning also. Knowing how people want to interact should also tell us a lot about how people want to learn. In the end, learning is a game (with scores, motivation, outcomes, rules, and all those items Marc Prensky always mentions as defining a game), the difference is how fun and motivating we want to make that game.

People want to socialize, they want to interact. That is how learning should be. We (educators, instructional designers) have a lot to learn from the gaming industry… a lot to learn.

UPDATE>>

from TechCrunch:

“Social games are not just multiplayer games. In social games, existing social relationships add context and motivation to the gameplay. Social games are more fun to play with people you know than with anonymous strangers. Examples of social games include Friends for Sale*, where you had better buy your girlfriend back from that guy who has been hitting on her at the gym,(fluff) Friends, where if your BFF feeds your pet, you are compelled to reciprocate, and Power Challenge, where you can’t let your team’s loss to your fraternity brother’s team go unavenged.

Even single player games can become social when the right infrastructure for community and social interaction are built around them, including high score leaderboards, achievement badges, challenges and simple message boards, as Kongregate, Addicting Games, MiniClip andMindJolt are demonstrating.”

Update: Come2Play released for white label casual gaming networks.

Social Media Assessment and Learner Progress Tracking

enzofsilva — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:44:59 +0000

Something that has bothered me is that, while the adoption of social media (Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, social networks and so on) depends on a paradigm shift and require a new way of thinking “learning”, how can we assess learner progress in a modality of tools in which user-generated content can be so scattered throughout different tools? I know you might be thinking as you read: “But these are new tools, they require a new way for evaluation, progress tracking and certification…” just like I said above. But the problem is that the adoption of the tools seems to happen at a faster speed than the attitude change toward learning assessment and certification!

Instructional Designers, instructors, learners are using social media more and more to enrich learning experiences and more research is needed concerning assessment and progress tracking in this context.