Social Computing and Presented at ELI Meetings

Building a community of learners can be especially challenging when working with online and distance education students. By using social networking tools like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Second Life, we can begin to construct a community of sharing and participation that leads to enhanced satisfaction and a true sense of belonging.

The annual Horizon Report, a joint publication of the NMC and the ELI, highlights new technologies for teaching, learning, and creative expression. This session will review the research and process behind the report. The 2008 Horizon Report and its findings will be officially released at this session.

Virtual worlds such as Second Life offer powerful teaching and learning opportunities by integrating participatory, social, and immersive media for student-centered learning. Learn about Second Life, its use as a learning space, and its predictive role in the future of learning.

Over the past year, the McMaster University Library has undertaken a radical transformation to accommodate the changing needs of our users. The transformation included a 12-week “learning 2.0” training program. The results have been significant. Come see how we did it and how we are using Web 2.0 daily.

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.

Web 2.0 tools have the power to transform education. Such a transformation requires that faculty, students, and institutions take risks. With those risks comes fear, which is often unarticulated. How do you tackle this fear and make real change? Join us to face this fear together in a multimedia, interactive miniplay.

This video from the University of Dayton shows students discussing in their own words how and why they use social networking applications such as Facebook. It streams from the University of Dayton Web site in Windows Media format.

Virtual Learning Environments in 3D We've passed through Web 1.0, entering the architecture of participation. Wikis and other read/write Web 2.0 capabilities provide a collective voice and opportunities for collaboration. They remain, however, fundamentally textual. Emerging now is the Web with shape and form--the 3D virtual world (VW). As education becomes global, will immersive 3D VWs learning spaces provide a persistent new home campus? Discuss.