Social software as a tool to sustain learning comunities

Sometimes we all get stuck in our comfort zones. We feel comfortable with what we know and what fits our socio-cultural interaction and learning styles. Stepping outside these bounds feels overwhelming and challenging.

Online instructors may also get stuck in this rut. Specifically in terms of how they use social software tools as a means to build and sustain their learning communities. This may stem from a generational disconnect. The net generation is here, online, and ready to learn. They have used these tools as part of their daily lives, and will feel comfortable with using them to learn. However, the way they experience and use social software tools can be greatly different from the way an instructor from a different generation conceptualizes how they can be used.

In attempt to catch up, some instructors branch out and use a few new tools. Using Wikis, blogs, and forum discussions in their online courses is usually the first step. Ironically, many of these same instructors do not utilize these tools for their own personal and professional development. I must admit, this has been my first experience actually creating my own blog. Without this experience, I didn’t realize its power to create social capital and form community. Even though I visit and read blogs all the time, I still envisioned a blog just being a personal journal. It just didn’t click.

So it is not surprising that when instructors get comfortable with using these limited set of tools in their online classrooms, they end up getting stuck again. Wikis, blogs, forum discussions, are just the tip of the ice burg of the Web 2.0 tools available, including the vast ways that the net generation are already use these tools as part of their own personal networking and learning spaces. Instead of being separated by the walls of a physical or online classrooms, the net generation are developing social capital, as well as creating and sharing their own learning objects as part of their daily lives.

It can also be overwhelming due to the speed at which Web 2.0 tools change. Brighter, shinier, and more powerful tools arrive everyday. Keeping ups is a struggle. As they newer ones emerge the resistance for their reappears. It doesn’t click in terms of how they can be used in an online classroom.

A few of the newer Web 2.0 tools that get some resistance or looks include Twitter, Virtual Life, and Mind Maps. Isn’t Twitter just a thing that teens use to have banal conversation or uninteresting aspects of their daily lives with their friends? Isn’t Virtual Life just for unsocial gamers? Aren’t Mind Maps used by yourself to get organized on your own personal computer? How in the world can they be used in an online classroom? Can they really be used to create and sustain an online learning community?

The goal of my team's final paper is to leaving readers with an general understanding of how to use these new tools, get themselves unstuck, and help students to leverage these tools to form learning communities.

Strengthening the bonds

This week, our team worked to put together our Group Contract. In doing so, I got to learn more about each person's style of working, and how we are going to work together. Some strengths and roles are starting to emerge. Each of us put up a few ideas about what we would include. My other team mates had specific ideas that they wanted to include. My contribution was a lot more theoretical at the beginning, wanting to make a structure of everything that we should address in the contract. Then, to move forward with getting the details together for each idea. After the first draft was put up, we then had a web conference that included a white space area that also allowed the group to view web pages, for which we could all manipulate. It was my first experience with this technology. While we came up with some great ideas towards moving forward with the contract and the project, the real benefit was getting to learn more about each other. Even though much of the conversation was regarding the tool and the work, I learned so much about them that I wouldn't be able to get from a message board or picture. Just putting a "voice" to a name was helpful in learning more about their personality, learning style, and collaboration style. There was a small technical difficulty, that we quickly resolved. However, I could see that this may be one thing that could interfere with the learning process for our students. Someone on either end could get frustrated and decided not to participate. Also, being exposed to this tool was an eye-opening experience. Just like doing this blog for the first time, the way that you think of a social software tool pre-and post- using is so different. Even if it is an exact match with your understanding of the concept, the tool involved. Using it, and especially in a collaborative context, makes all the difference. Every time I mention any of the tools I will use in my course, not having used it myself seems so disingenuous. I really don't have an understanding of the power that it has, and how to ultilize it appropriately. I am going to have to dig in more and more and take every opportunity that I can get inside and outside this course to use them. At the end of this week, I feel like it has been productive and feel much more of a bond with my teammates.