Amanda’s E-learning Blog

Social Networking

‘What is your experience of social networks?’

My experience of social networks involves the use of myspace and facebook. In Boyd’s article she implies that only teenagers set up these social networking accounts. I disagree here, while i would assume that yes, it is mainly teenagers that do have these sites, a lot of younger people do use them. She also suggests that parents are panicking because they are unaware of this technology and do not have control over it. I have experienced this with my parents and my younger sister.

I believe it does make communication a lot easier as well as a lot more frequent. I loved myspace when i used it and now i love facebook.

‘How could these be used in learning environments?’

Learning through social networking is done fairly informally. Ie my workplace has its own facebook group where we share ideas and comments. This is a form of learning by socialising. Otherwise, generally I do not think facebook and myspace should be used for formal learning. However, if UTS Online is classed as a social networking site, which im not sure if it is, then yes that is used for learning. Discussing ideas, informing people of important notices, providing readings and workbook modules.

References
- Boyd, D. 2007, ‘Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?’ <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/edition-13/social-network-sites-public-private-or-what/>

danah boyd

Synchronous Communication:

‘What is synchronous communication?’

‘What is the benefit of synchronous communication?’

‘What do you think are some of the drivers in the current environment?’

Asynchronous Communication

‘What is asynchronous communication?’

‘What is the benefit of asynchronous communication?’

‘What do you think are some of the drivers in the current environment?’

‘What is meant by web-based application?’

A type of technology that requires the use of the internet.

‘What is Web 2.0?’

‘What is its relevance to learning?’

Web-based applications i am familiar with:
- Weblogs
- Wiki
- Chat
- E-Portfolios
- Virtual Worlds
- Social Networking

Web- based applications i would like to explore further:
- Virtual worlds. The first time I was exposed to a virtual world such as second life I did not like it at all. However now I have seen it operating a few more times I would not mind exploring it. But only if i needed to.
- Social networking. I have enjoyed using sites such as myspace and facebook so would not mind exploring more if they become popular.

Current Technologies

‘What are the 6 key emerging technologies identified by the 2008 report?’

- Grassroots Video
- Collaboration Webs
- Mobile Broadband
- Data Mashups
- Collective Intelligence
- Social Operating Systems

‘Which of these technologies are you familiar with, and in what context have either used them, or heard of them?’

- Grassroots Video. Im assuming this includes sites such as ‘you tube’ which I have been on a few times. Never uploaded anything though.
 - Mobile Broadband. All my current mobile does is makes/takes calls and sends/recieves messages. However I do know some people who can go on the internet with their mobile. Ive never seen it done though.
- Collective Intelligence. I think this would include wikis, in which case, we had to make one in E-learning Experiences last year.
- Social Operating Systems. I did frequently use myspace when it was popular. Now i use facebook regularly as a social networking tool.

‘Review the segnificant trends – how do these relate to your experiences of technology in learning contexts?’

The second point explains that globalisation is affecting the way we work and collaborate. This is shown through the increased use of the internet and different technologies that are emerging from this. This is evident through my learning, for example, when I have assignments, I tend to use the internet resources more so now than when in first year when I mainly used books as references.

Third point explains that items of technology are getting smaller, this relates to my technology experiences in regards to learning, for example, with smaller laptops they are more portable and therefore I am able to take mine to university.

Horizon Report 2007
‘Review your familiarity with the key emerging technologies from 2007 and your current technology experiences.’

- User created accounts. In first year uni we created an e-portfolio. In second year we created blogs and wikis. These are all user created accounts. Social networking sites would also be included in this, especially facebook because the site is all about the user that created it.
- Social networking. The Horizon report says that social networking is why students log on. And yes, that is sometimes the only reason I turn on the computer. I have both a facebook and a myspace account.
- Mobile phones. A couple of years I had a phone with the company ‘3′ which allowed me to access their intranet where I was able to download songs, news, weather, games, amongst other items.
- Virtual worlds. Not much experience here. I must have had some experience here other than just watching someone on Second Life, but cannot think of any at the moment.
- New scholarship and emerging forms of publication. Perhaps this is referring to journal articles etc being availiable online? In that case then yes I have used these.
- Massively multi player educational gaming. I do not do gaming.

 Today we had people come in to talk to us from DoCS (Department of Community Services) to explain about their organisation. The talk consisted on what the department does and their current situation on training for the staff. This information will be useful to help us with assignment two.

We also talked about Activity 1.3 which is looking at RSS feeds and aggregation (check). We have a little experience with RSS feeds from Elearning Experiences when we set up our netvibes account. Anne showed us a little video about RSS in easy terms and it mentioned something called Google Reader, which I have never heard of before. Sounds similar to netvibes.. in which all the information from your favourite sites can be uploaded to one web page. I think I may have a look into it.

 It was actually a bit annoying today when I went to log into my blog to write a post, it said something about enabling cookies – which I dont actually remember what they are, however remember hearing the term in elearning experiences. It sent me to instructions to change settings on my computer. However they did not link with my computer so that was annoying, but i tried later and it worked.

 Im going to have to see what I can do to better organise my blog. Because now that Elearning Experiences is finished, I dont think the separate pages need to be there. Maybe I can join them together under the one page. I also would like to have a page where I can write casual posts like this, and another one for the module activities for this subject. I also need to wrtie on my ‘about’ page, which I do not actually remember being there before! Must have been.

 P.S Really do not like Mac computers.

Also.. This post was in a different section. I attempted to make a new page for this subject however all the posts keep automatically going onto this page. So ill just add it in here. There must be something that can be done to change it, but it is too late now.

“Last week was the first class of the new subject ‘E-Learning Design’ which follows on from ‘E-Learning Experiences’ which I completed last semester. This subject requires us to continue making use of our blogs. I havent used or looked at my blog since november last year and was very surprised when I came back to notice that the background had changed! I don’g remember doing that so not sure what happened there. I quite like the new set out so will leave it the way it is”