Georgetown University Hosts “Social Media in the Classroom: Implications for Teaching and Learning”

On Friday, Feb 19, I attended the Georgetown University-hosted event, “Social Media in the Classroom: Implications for Teaching and Learning.”

The event featured three esteemed speakers, each deeply involved in social media on their respective campuses:

• Gerry McCartney, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO and Oesterle Professor of Information Technology, Purdue University
• Ulises Mejias, Assistant Professor of New Media in the Communication Studies Department at the State University of New York at Oswego
• Edward Maloney, Director of Research and Learning Technologies at the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Georgetown University

The full video of the event will be offered on iTunes U — Georgetown University within the next few weeks.

Quick highlights:

The first speaker, Dr. McCartney of Purdue University, described two technologies being used at his school:

• Signals is a system used in large classrooms to identify students academically at risk . According to Dr. McCartney, the students that have the highest risk of not succeeding in their first year are students that are used to performing well at high schools with lower standards. Upon entering a competitive classroom environment that demands higher performance, these students often perform poorly in their first exposure to university-level curriculum. Signals uses data mined from Blackboard Vista to place each student in a “risk group.” They are then given a stoplight rating that represents their performance and potential to succeed in the class.

  The feedback is real-time and given to students on their Blackboard homepage. Along with the rating system, instructor-written intervention emails and suggestions for study resources are given to provide the student with an early warning and aid to improve performance.

• Hotseat Collaboration is a technology that attempts to engage the student in the classroom using the methods and devices that students are already familiar with. This mobile Web application promotes “micro-discussion,” allowing students in a large class to interact by posting messages during class using their Facebook or Twitter accounts, sending text messages, or using the Hotseat Web site. The instructor will start a session by posing a question for discussion, and students respond to the question. In addition to these responses, students can vote on which topics and questions they’d like to see addressed.
  
  

The next speaker, Dr. Edward Maloney of Georgetown, spoke at length about two important questions:

• 1. What does it mean to take seriously the impact of social media on learning?
  Dr. Maloney brought up a concept that we’re trying to grasp with SMCEDU: learning environments can change, they don’t have to remain static.
  
  He related Web 1.0 (the static Web) as corresponding with traditional teaching practices; that is, delivering information through a central source to a wide audience. Web 2.0, he said, corresponds well to our real world practices outside of the classroom.
  
  As learning happens outside of the classroom (everywhere, really), social technologies encourage the ideas of community, collaboration, exploration, exchange, and communication. Further, it promotes learning in informal, real, participatory, dynamic, and ongoing ways…in other words, learning in a non-traditional sense. What does it ultimately mean to think about social media for learning? To put it succinctly, teaching and learning in a new way.

• 2. What is at stake in this question and the answers we may provide?
  This is a question that never ceases to fascinate. What’s at stake, in my mind, is how we distribute education. From expanding classrooms to empowering students with a new enthusiasm and means to learn, the true scope of what social technologies can do for learning is exciting to speculate, and beyond anyone’s current ability to realize.

Dr. Maloney described informal writing and blogging exercises that helped his students plainly express their understanding of the class. It also gave the instructor a constant evaluator of how each student was doing, along with providing a collaborative, ongoing document that could be used for reference by each student.

The final speaker of the day, Dr. Ulises Mejias, brought some interesting perspectives to social media, and the overall effectiveness of using social technologies.

He offered the network as episteme. As networks are not just metaphors, we use them to form templates and models of social orgnanization; indeed, we use them to shape social realities. But, he asked, what are the limits of networks as templates? What do they include and exclude, make possible or impossible?

Dr. Mejias shared some of the concepts presented in his class:

• Nodocentrism: The distance between a node and something outside the network. For all practical purposes, if something is not a node, it cannot be rendered in the network as a node can only see other nodes.

  I took this to mean that if a person is not included in the network, they don’t “exist” within the network, and the data gathered from network participants should take this into consideration.

• Paranodality: The outside of the network is not empty but inhabited by multitudes that do not conform to the organizing logic of the network. He described this as, “that which cannot be Googled.”

  When considering who/what is excluded from a network, one can view social media as a sort of social slavery: who decides what’s included/excluded?

  Another consideration is that social media tools are largely controlled by private companies. As such, they might not always be in the best interest of learners despite being convenient and cheap. As services such as Youtube (the go-to service to upload videos) or Twitter (the go-to service for micro-blogging) strenghthen their positions, participation among users is increased, but so is the inequality among competing services. As everyone knows, competition is a crucial component in the success of an open market.

  As it stands now, using the popular social media services is easy and cheap, but the relationship between these companies and its users is not equal. The shift may not be from a one-to-many paradigm to a many-to-many paradigm as popularly touted; rather, it’s a shift from one-to-many to many-to-one.

  Dr. Mejias’s final point was one that struck home with Social Media Club Education Connection: What is the universities’ role in social media?

  It’s possible, and perhaps suitable, for the university to develop alternative social media tools that encompass a variety of services (blogging, micro-blogging, wikis, social networking, etc.) and release them as public goods. They could be promoted through their use in projects both within and outside the university, becoming refined and standardized as they evolve. There is a possibility (currently refuted) that Facebook won’t always be free; similarly, the guarantee of free doesn’t exist for other sites/services. Why not have universities work conjointly to offer an alternative?

SMC-DC Goes Federal with FCW’s Chris Dorobek

Our next SMC-DC meeting will be May 15 at Viget Labs. We welcome Chris Dorobek, Editor-in-Chief of Federal Computer Week. Chris is no stranger to social media, and he will share his experience with blogging and social networks (visit him on Twitter and Facebook), as well as his opinion of government and military use of Web 2.0.

The federal government strives for collaboration between the different departments and units it holds. The government is still experimenting with social media, with the wiki Intellipedia already in use for the intelligence community, and even the Department of the Navy’s CIO dipping his toes into blogging.

So how else is the government using social media? Are they ready for it, and what’s the value for them? Come discuss the current and future state of Web 2.0 as the government views it.

More details:

Please RSVP by Tuesday, May 13 to Larissa Fair.

Special thanks to Viget Labs for hosting the event.

Date: Thursday, May 15, 2008

Time: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Location:

Viget Labs headquarters

400 S. Maple Avenue, Suite 200
Falls Church, VA 22046

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=19100475790

SMC-DC: Personality Not Included with Rohit Bhargava

Come join SMC-DC for the official Washington, DC area book launch for Rohit Bhargava’s new book Personality Not Included. Maybe you caught him at Blogger Social, or maybe at one of his other book tour destinations. But, if not, now is your chance!

Personality Not Included was recently released by McGraw-Hill and serves as a guide for companies on how authenticity is the new standard that brands need live up to in the social media era – the book has received significant early praise and features a forward by bestselling author and entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki.

We will kick off the festivities with a book signing at Barnes & Noble in Arlington from 5:30 – 7:00 pm. From there, please feel free to join us for an informal dinner and drinks gathering at Whitlow’s on Wilson from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm.

Books will be available for purchase on-site at Barnes & Noble. There is ample garage parking, some metered street spaces, and both locations are metro accessible at the Orange Line’s Clarendon stop.

Please RSVP to Larissa Fair via e-mail no later than Monday, April 28.

Please designate if you will be attending the book signing, dinner, or both.

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=11709537599

Hope to see you there!

DATE: Thursday, May 1, 2008
BOOK SIGNING

5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Barnes & Noble – Arlington

Clarendon Market Commons
2800 Clarendon Blvd. Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22201

DRINKS AND DINNER

7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Whitlow’s on Wilson (beach bar, to the left in the back)

2854 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22201

SMC-DC Features WhyGoSolo: More Than Bridging Your Online and Offline Worlds

Please join us for our next Social Media Club DC (SMC-DC) event on Thursday, April 10 at 6:30 pm. We will gather at Viget Labs to hear some insight from Ann Bernard, Founder and CEO of WhyGoSolo.

Ann will show us how a local start-up company has created a social media platform that leverages the web from one click of a button. WhyGoSolo has the solution to bridge our online worlds to offline real world connections but that’s only a small part of the story. The more involved and complex social media becomes, the more critical it is to keep it simple and user-friendly for both businesses and web users to leverage. Ann will explain more about the key factors of creating a platform that is fully integrated in everyone’s online worlds and that works has a hub of information that gathers and delivers information where people want to receive it and view it.

This is a fabulous opportunity to get a behind the scenes look at the perspective of a web start-up CEO and how to develop a platform that is built to meet the social media needs of event promoters, planners and entertainment venues.

More details:

Please RSVP by Tuesday, April 8 to Larissa Fair.

Special thanks to Viget Labs for hosting the event.

Date: Thursday, April 10, 2008

Time: 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Location:

Viget Labs headquarters

400 S. Maple Avenue, Suite 200
Falls Church, VA 22046

WhyGoSolo Group: Join the WhyGoSolo Social Media Club DC Group and find someone to attend this event and future events with you!

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=29723725382

DC Cloverfield Meet/Twit Up

Social Media Club DC: Cloverfield Meet/Twit Up

Join Social Media Club DC for a happy hour and viewing of Cloverfield. We will be meeting on Friday, January 18 at Gallery Place for the 5:00 p.m. viewing of Cloverfield, a monster movie featuring JJ Abrams’ user-generated inspired video style. Buy your tickets today!

There’s a Clyde’s right by the movie theater.  Happy hour starts at 3:30 for the monster mash!

Social Media Club DC Round Table Tonight

One of the intersting things about being involved in the broader social media community within the different cities we visit is being able to compare and contrast regional attitudes and concerns. For me personally, I am always amazed at how much we share in common more so than the differences – the differences tend to be more like the nuanced approach to spices that good chefs use in creating a similar dish – the ingredients are generally the same, but the flavor is a bit different.

So tonight here in DC, rather than heading deeply into the impact of social media on the elections as the focal point, I want to follow on the Round Table in New York last Thursday and our Round Table in San Francisco last Wednesday. So after a short round of introductions around the table and an under five minute pitch on what we hope to accomplish with Social Media Club, I would love to dive into a discussion on “What is Social Media?” While we could talk about that all night, after a while, we will switch into a discussion on the hot topic of Disclosure and the situational awareness of why, when, where and how to properly disclose interests and conflicts of interest. Finally, we can wrap up the last 30 or so minutes and get into the matter of social media in the elections.  There is a very fluid dynamic here, so we will go with the flow and talk about other matters that look interesting as well, but it would be great if we could delve into those three questions.

Afterwards, we are going out for a ‘blogger dinner’ where everyone is responsible for their own food/drink. The last two we have held in DC were at the Daily Grill, but tonight we had planned on going to Buffalo Billiards.  Turns out they won’t let us do the side room without a deposit and guarantee food minimum, so some other venues were suggested like Eli’s.  We will make a decision at the round table and post it here in the comments later this evening if you want to join us, or use your Internet sleuthing skills to find my cell # and give me a call after 8pm.