I’ve just joined the Social Media Classroom, a project initiated by Howard Rheingold and funded through a HASTAC award, provided by the MacArthur Foundation. This project seeks to empower and support learners and educators via new means of communicating, interacting and collaborating, and which emphasises the importance of “participatory pedagogy.”
From the website:
“The Social Media Classroom…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. The Collaboratory (or Colab), is what we call just the web service part of it. Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMC materials freely, and we host your Colab communities if you don’t want to install your own.”
Having only just gained access to the community area, there is much I still have to explore; and yet I cannot help but be inspired and empowered by the opportunities and mission this project seeks to promote.
“…we’re launching an instance of the Colab as a community of practice for learners and teachers, educators, administrators, funders, students of pedagogy and technology design, engaged students who share a common interest in using social media to afford a more student-centric, constructivist, collaborative, inquiry-oriented learning. “
If you are interested in the educational possibilities afforded by recent innovation in social media, I strongly encourage you to take a look at the Social Media Classroom. Near as I can tell the project only just recently launched and is looking to bring more forward-thinking educators together for the purposes of exploring and discussing the learning opportunities in this brave new world.
In keeping with the opensource sensibilities share-alike idealism that underpin the pedagogical aspects of the Social Media Classroom, the technical framework supporting the community has been made available for download as well. The embedded video clip above provides an overview of the current functionality.
Hi Mike,
You’re right. It seems like a really inspiring opportunity. I guess that is something that I have been getting from Howard from a long time. Inspiration that is. I look forward to seeing you there.
Cheers,
Rhys
Hi Rhys,
Great to catch up with you in the SMC chatroom a few minutes ago – even though the room was created accidentally. I mentioned it to Howard via Twitter and posted in the Service Desk area of Forum, so hopefully it will get removed before anyone gets confused!
Useful tool to have around regardless though. I can definitely see me using it again.
Here’s hoping we can inspire others to sign up to the community. It’s a great topic, and a great cause given the wiki contents can be reused by others.
Cheers,
Mike
The Social Media Classroom includes a free and open source 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. The Collaboratory, is what we call just the web service part of it. Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMB materials freely.
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Jenifer
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