2. Who We Are
•Erin Knight, Research Director
•Nathan Gandomi, Programs Director
•Initial research with participatory media 09-10
school year at UCB; ongoing 10-11 semester
•Interested in how tools are used and what
instructors/students think about how they were
used
3. Center for NGTL
• School of Information
• Education technology for
student-centered learning and
student engagement
• Bridge between academia and
industry
• Research-based practice
4. Participatory Media
• It’s everywhere
• Called many things: “Web 2.0”,
“participatory media”, etc.
• Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us,
YouTube, etc.
• Bottom Line: Ability to share and
participate online
• Line between creator and
consumer blurred, barrier to entry
often lowered
5. Educational
Background / Potential
• Shifts towards student or
learner-centered environments
• Adaptive, Flexible, Dynamic,
Relevant
• Student contribute to the
course material
• Roots in Papert’s
Constructionism and
Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal
development”
6. Participatory Media
for Education
• Emerging Space
• Educators incorporating blogs,
wikis, forums, etc. into course
environments
• Enable course members to
For education
participate, add content, further
discuss issues and topics,
develop community, an so on...
• Creates a learner-centered,
flexible learning environment that
can adapt to student needs/
interests
7. “The power derived from using social media in
group learning processes comes not from a more
efficient computerized extension of older
communication forms—the classroom discussion,
texts to be read, essays and theses to be written.
The power of social media in education and
elsewhere derives from their affordances for forms
of communication and social behavior that were
previously prohibitively difficult or expensive for
more than a tiny elite to benefit.” -Howard Rheingold
9. Tools: Blogs
• Expression of individual voice,
opinion pieces
• Tagged, Comments
• Examples: Wordpress
• Need to have an active
community
• Can be intimidating
10. Tools: Forums
• Many-to-many discussions and debates
• Time and space-independent
• Typically threaded so that you can follow
the entire discussion
• Examples: Yahoo! Answers, WoW Forums,
also built into P2PU.org
• No assurance of response from
participants, facilitator must stay engaged
in forum
• Can get unwieldy
11. Tools: Wiki
• Collaborative document or
resource building
• Examples: Wikipedia, Google
Docs, P2P has existing wiki
• Requires some curation to ensure
pages are linked and easy to find
• Vulnerable to inaccuracy, poor
revisions, and vandalism because
anyone can edit.
• Attribution and original ownership
can get lost amongst a large group
of collaborators and editors.
12. Tools: Social
Bookmarking
• Collaborative Research
• Link Sharing; Shared course
repository
• Tagged; Discoverable
• Examples: delicious.com
• Difficult to assure of quality of
bookmarked items
• Does not free buried resources
(restricted access, journals,
libraries)
13. Tools: Chat
• Synchronous, informal conversation tool
• Good for creating community or asking
questions
• Built into P2PU.org
• Informal nature sometimes a bad thing
• May lead to expectation that the
organizer is always available for
questions, so guidelines should be set in
advance.
15. Learning Objectives
• Much of existing literature is
tool-focused
• Align certain learning activities
with certain tools
• We saw each tool used for wide
range of learning activities
• No “one-use-fits-each-tool”
• Convergence of tools OR
evidence of student’s adapting
tool to their needs
16. What does this mean
for you?
•Identify your key
objectives
•Lots of room for
creativity
17. Examples of Learning Objectives
• Express clear, coherent thoughts through writing
• Collaboratively write or build documents
• Analyze or critique existing work
• Connect course topics with current events or personal experience
• Debate and discuss issues in the field topic
• Conduct research, contribute to course content repository
• Synthesize various perspectives about the topic or concept
18. More Examples of Learning Objectives
• Reflect on learning, metacognition
• Take responsibility for learning; Teach others about course topics
• Review the work of classmates
• Ask a question / get assistance
• Share work / learn by social example
• Create community
• Learn discipline language; Develop information organization skills
19. Examples of Tool Alignment
LO: Express clear, coherent thoughts through writing
express personal ideas and
Blog
thoughts through a blog post
generate a collaborative
Wiki document (i.e. create a Wikipedia
entry for a topic, or develop a summary
page)
debate or discuss a topic or
question with examples from
Forum
readings or other sources as
support
20. Examples of Tool Alignment
LO: Share participant work / learn by social example
post summary of work with link
Blog
to file
each participant build wiki
page for an assignment or
Wiki
other participant work, shared
with entire class
post sample exam questions
as forum topics for participants
Forum
to discuss and build answers
21. Examples of Tool Alignment
LO: Synthesize various perspectives about the topic
write a post to summarize all
Blog perspectives; write a post with
the voice of one perspective
create and/or edit pages that
Wiki summarize and synthesize
varying perspectives
23. Delivery: How to use
these tools?
Icebreakers!
Share parts of the participants
Create Community lives (images, written response,
video).
Discuss experiences related to
the issue of the course
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drurydrama/
24. Delivery: How to use
these tools?
Facilitator != instructor, teacher or
lecturer. Participate in your own
activities!
Give examples of assignments/
Model Expected Use activities.
Participants will be different in
skills and comfort level with tools
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abchao/
25. Delivery: How to use
these tools?
What is the purpose of the post?
What kind of comment should
you make?
Give Feedback Frequency and immediacy
Better for learning
26. Don’t Panic or Feel Like
You Have to Over Plan “Once I posted a couple
times, it became a
habit.”
• Don’t feel like you have to have
it all worked out
“Since it wasn't clear
• Some guidance is good to set
about how we needed
the stage / get members used to use it or if it was
to the tool(s) graded, we used it the
way that we wanted to.”
• Leave some wiggle room for
participants to adapt use of
tools
“I think the more that I
would go in there and read
the posts and try to put in
my own two cents, the
more I liked it and the
more I wanted to use it. ”
27. Now You.
• Questions?
• Specific examples?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/altemark/46732233/
