Tag: cp2tech03

Sam Rose on the Social Media Classroom

Drill bitLast week I shared a podcast with Howard Rheingold on the Social Media Classroom as part of  CPSquare’s “Connected Futures” workshop. This week we have a podcast with Sam Rose, one of the key developers of the Drupal based Social Media Classroom.

Listen! A Conversation With Sam Rose on the Social Media Classroom

Some of the many fabulous observations from Sam that caught my ear include:

  • Sam’s observations about the iteration between the deployment of a tool, the community’s creative use of the tool and the subsequent develop and iteration of the tool echoes what we found in our work for Digital Habitats.
  • The thinking around the differences of a platform designed for delivery of a curriculum (i.e a Learning Management System or LMS) and a platform designed to support inquiry based learning.
  • The importance of an integrated starting place and then as social media literacy grows, the exploration outward to other tools.
  • How SMC thinks about forums as discussion starting places, blogs as individual reflection/note taking spaces and wikis as a place for crafting joint learning.
  • The role of affordances to make use easier.  (For example, the little  color coded toolbars in SMC). And how some of those affordances are subtle and benefit from some “showing” — but once you learn them how useful they are.
  • The trajectory of SMC towards becoming a place to integrate with other tools and content through APIs. (Lots of exciting things to come!)

Creative Commons License photo credit: EnergyTomorrow

Howard Rheingold on the Social Media Classroom

Flickr CC image by vagawi As part of CPSquare’s “Connected Futures” workshop exploring the use of web technologies in the service of communities of practice, we (John Smith and I!) asked Howard Rheingold to share a little bit about the Social Media Classroom (SMC) he developed as part of a MacArthur Foundation Award (A HASTAC award specifically).

We were interested to hear about the development both because we are using a hosted version of the SMC as our “home base” this iteration of the workshop, and because Howard’s project is a nice example of community technology stewardship. Every platform has its lineage, the experiences of the designers that inform design choices during development. What needs is it trying to meet? How can it do this in the simplest and elegant manner?

SMC is created on a Drupal base but customized to reflect what Howard thought would be useful for educators. But it is not just a technology platform. There is also a rich library of new media literacy resources and a community of practitioners.  From the SMC website:

The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools.  The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos.

For communities picking or even building platforms for themselves, there are some nice pearls from Howard.

Click here to listen in: 30 Minutes with Howard Rheingold on the Social Media Classroom… and other stuff!

Some of the things Howard talked about included:

  • the importance of an on-ramp to new media – with integration of tools being an important early experience that helps us be more confident when we start using tools in a more “free range” manner.
  • the need for a new media literacy – just because we are all online doesn’t mean we understand and know how to use it. What are the essentials that make a difference?
  • the origins and inspirations of some of the tools in the SMC
  • Howard’s exploration of teaching at this phase in his career and the importance of a constructivist, participatory approach.

If you are interested in SMC for your learning context, you can download the software to your server, or if you don’t have access to a server or IT help, the project is offering a limited amount of hosted space. If you want to learn more and engage in the SMC c ommunity, join the community of practice.

Photo credit:vagawi