Social and more

Educational social software. This includes formal and informal tools, like information messengers, blogs, wikis, e-portfolios, and personal learning environments (Elgg). These tools are designed to make use of the networking power of the world wide web and allow users to be “connected” online and offline, and to be able to share, create and recreate text, audio and video.

The advent of social software calls for a new approach to designing learning. George Siemens suggest that this new approach could be “connectivism”.

What is Web 2.0? What is social about software? Who better to tell you than Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of Web 1.0. Berners-Lee calls for Web 2.0 calm: But wait…he’s not talking positively. He’s not gesturing wildly about web 2.0? What gives?

Diana Oblinger has published a new book: Learning Spaces. The book contains case studies of learning space design in a variety of organizations. And check out Using wiki in education to see some practical educational applications.

Free is good, as is open learning, and E-Press has lots of free books (if you download) or if you want the hardcopy you can pay. A great example is Complex Systems for a Complex World that talks about how we must understand human reasoning through simulation to assist us in understanding the complexity of social networking.

For a bit of fun, and to hear all the modern technological babble used in one 3 minute skit see George Carlin perform his Modern man routine.

Seeking a better world? One where opportunities are endless, where physical limitations can be overcome? See this video that creates such a world using Second Life - an online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy..