EDUCAUSE | Social Computing and Collaborative Technologies

Collaboration Tools

ckeller — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:21:16 -0500

Students use technology in natural ways that allow them to do what they want: communicate with anyone they want, in the time and space that suits them best. Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for collaboration across geographic boundaries.

7 Things You Should Know About Ning

gdobbin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:54:04 -0500

Ning is an online service that allows users to create their own social networks and join and participate in other networks. No technical skill is required to set up a social network, and there are no limits to the number of networks a user can join. Users of Ning social networks have access to functionality similar to that of more well-known social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace. Various features allow users to read news or learn about related events, join groups, read and comment on blog entries, view photos and videos, and other activities as set up by the network creator. RSS feeds let users subscribe to updates from specific parts of the social network.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About…" briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more, please visit the ELI Resources page.

RavenDesk: How Is Your Economics Course Like Your English Course?

drupal — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:00:51 -0600

RavenDesk is a web application through which students share conceptual connections between courses. Students thus build a view of their own and their campus’s intellectual life by exposing the interrelationships between courses. An ELI edition for conference presentations will also be available. See http://www.patrickgmj.net/project/eli-ravendesk.

ELI In Conversation: George Siemens and Michael Wesch Talk About Future Learning.

gbayne — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:48:53 -0600

In this podcast we feature a conversation between George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. and Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University It was recorded at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Michael Wesch presented a session entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting. He also produced a video, which is referenced in this conversation, entitled "The Machine is Us/ing Us".

George Siemens presented a session entitled, "Connectivism" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

2008 Horizon Report

ckeller — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:38:49 -0600

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) jointly produced Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. The 2008 report focuses on the following topics;

Grassroots Video
Collaboration Webs
Mobile Broadband
Data Mashups
Collective Intelligence
Social Operating Systems