social media and the open sharing of educational content
DESCRIPTION
The focus of this presentation is to discuss emergent social media as a disruptive force facilitating the open sharing of educational content. The author presents case studies on the uses of social media to encourage open learning, collaborative learning, shared content and resources, curriculum collaborations, and student generated content. Bolter and Grusin propose that new digital media are not external agents that come to disrupt an unsuspecting culture. They emerge from within cultural contexts, and they refashion other media, which are embedded in the same or similar contexts. I demonstrate that social media can indeed serve as a disruptive force when appropriated, refashioned, and placed within a framework of critical inquiry and analysis, and that a movement to share open educational resources is part of this disruption. According to Lev Manovich in his seminal work The Language of New Media, the computer media revolution affects all stages of communication, including acquisition, manipulation, storage, and distribution; it also affects all types of media- texts, still images, moving images, sound, and spatial constructions. Social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, blogs, collaborative wikis, and a wide range of web 2.0 tools are taking this revolution to the next level as students and faculty appropriate the new media to create innovative approaches to teaching, learning, collaborating, and the open sharing of intellectual property and creative content. In addition, virtual worlds such as Second Life provide both an immersive medium and extensive tools for content creation, social networking, and the sharing of educational content. The author presents case studies on the uses of social media to encourage open learning, collaborative learning, shared content and resources, curriculum collaborations, and student generated content.TRANSCRIPT
Social Media and the Open Sharing of Educational Content
The 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning
October 29. 2009
Nicola MartinezSUNY Empire State College
Abstract
The focus of this presentation is to discuss emergent social media as a disruptive force facilitating the open sharing of educational content.
The author will present case studies on the uses of social media to encourage open learning, collaborative learning, shared content and resources, curriculum collaborations, and student generated content.
Emphasis:
Theory/Conceptual Framework
Knowledge as the tool of Power
Nietzsche[1] [480] knowledge works as the tool of power.
Hence it is plain that it increases with every increase of power --... in other words: the measure of desire for knowledge depends upon the measure to which the Will to power grows in a species: a species grasps a certain amount of reality in order to become master of it, in order to press it into service. @ 267
[1] Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Walter Arnold Kaufmann, tr, R. J. Hollingdale, and tr. The Will to Power. New York: Random House, 1967.
Jean-François Lyotard
Knowledge and power are simply two sides of the same question: who decides what knowledge is, and who knows what needs to be decided?
Lyotard, Jean François. The Postmodern Condition : A Report on Knowledge, Theory and History of Literature ;; V. 10;. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Do Digital and Social Media Disrupt?
Bolter and Grusin propose that new digital media “are not external agents that come to disrupt an unsuspecting culture. They emerge from within cultural contexts, and they refashion other media, which are embedded in the same or similar contexts. ″Bolter, J.D and Grusin, R. Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2000
21st Century Media
• Social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, blogs, collaborative wikis, and a wide range of web 2.0 tools, the 3D web, and immersive virtual worlds have disrupted “business as usual” in higher education.
Students and Faculty
Appropriate social media to create innovative approaches to teaching, learning, collaborating, and the open sharing of intellectual property and creative content.
control of learningaccess to more resourcesdirect contact with knowledge, experts, and information brokers
Creates a community of knowledge creators and co-creators
Creates new centers of knowledge and epistemologies
Emphasizes collaboration
This Disrupts the Power Balance
AgencyAutonomyMedia LifeworldArtificial LifeAuthenticityPower in the marginsOwnershipChange
This Disrupts the Power Balance
Open Sharing of Resources
a movement to share open educational resources is part of this disruption.
(Garrison et al., 2000, 2006)
Virtual Worlds such as Second Life
provide both an immersive medium and extensive tools for content creation, social networking, and the sharing of educational content.
Genome Island
Mary Anne Clark of Texas Wesleyan University
has created a scientific playground for the serious study of the Genome.
The island and its resources are freely available to educators and their students.
Virtual HarlemTHE VIRTUAL HARLEM PROJECT (VHp) is a collaborative learning network whose purpose is to study the Harlem Renaissance, an important period in African American literary history, through the construction of a virtual reality scenario that represents Harlem, New York, as it existed between the 1920-30s. Virtual Harlem is a learning environment in which students studying the Harlem Renaissance can experience the historical context of its literature. The project was originally conceived in 1998 by Bryan Carter at Central Missouri State University and the first prototype was initiated in collaboration with Bill Plummer at the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri. This was one of the first times a virtual world was used to support the humanities and the African American experience.
The Salamander Project In SL
is a professional education community dedicated to identifying, describing, indexing, and advocating for the use of content discipline-specific teaching and learning assets in the virtual world of Second Life.
http://www.eduisland.net/salamanderwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Open Educational Resources• http://www.oercommons.org/
Open Learn Educational and Teaching Resources
British Open University
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/index.php
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/
CreativeCommons.org
• Sample license, attribution, share alike:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
• Makes it easy to license work for open sharing, with your choice of restrictions
• Sample license, attribution, share alike:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0/
Creative Commons Licenses
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Contact Information
• Visit our web site at:
http://www.esc.edu/cdl
Nicola MartinezDirector of Curriculum and Instructional Design
Center for Distance Learning113 West Avenue, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866518-587-2100, ext. 2276
