Social Software: Bringing it together (by breaking it apart) without your IT department
Facilitator: Joe Zerdin
Room: EDB 374
Capacity: 24
Been hearing a lot of buzz about social software? Do terms like blogroll, tweet, tumble, lifestreaming leave you confused or wanting to know more? Contrast this with the closed and overly structured nature of an enterprise Course Management System (CMS), which many any users find limiting. It's time to change that! Break free from the tired CMS routine and try something new! By the end of this session, you will and learn how to embed and mash together various tools to create your own flexible and custom learning environments. We will try online learning experiments you never thought possible, and all without the help of your IT department. And, don't worry if your programming expertise begins and ends with copy and paste...this session is for non-programmers.
- Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- identify numerous popular and emerging social software technologies
- recognize how tools are becoming more individually focused; yet increasingly used to promote collaboration -
- embed social learning tools into their various environments and understand how they interact in a number of novel ways -
- apply some social software mashup strategies to meet real learning & teaching goals
- Description of the activities planned for the workshop.
- Part 1 - Breaking it apart
- Introductions / Terminology / Opening Q&A
- Participants will setup a landing page/'home' (blog or CMS course) that will be used throughout the session
- Explore various collaborative social software / web 2.0 tools.
- Participants will interact with tools as they are presented.
- Some tools that will be covered: Twitter, Tangler, Tumblr, Flickr, Yahoo Live/Ustream, Del.icio.us, Netvibes, Google Docs, PbWiki/WikiSpaces, Blogger/Wordpress, Blip.tv/YouTube, etc.
- Key advantages of all the tools will be presented, discussed & shown how they can support students' learning
- Open, free, easy, interoperability, tags, rss, etc.
- Disadvantages and caveats of using 3rd party tool will also be discussed.
- Part 2 - Bringing it together
- Demo some popular mashups (flickr maps/places, twittervision, video mashups)
- Participants will discuss/analyze the goals and benefits of a couple of the mashups
- Participants will add tools to their 'home'
- Have participants create their own simple mashups using the methods explored
- Participants will use embed code, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other ways to mash together the tools
- Part 3 - Applying and working through solutions without your IT department
- Participants will work in groups on solving various teaching and learning scenarios keeping in mind some of the examples and approaches already explored
Joe Zerdin is the UBC Office of Learning Technology’s Course Technologies Training and Support Liaison. With over 6 years experience working with various educational technology tools, Joe has become well versed in promoting, supporting, troubleshooting, and lightening the pressures that are sometimes associated with adopting new technologies in a teaching and learning environment.