Social Media / Web 2.0 Whats that then ?? January 24, 2007
Posted by Brian in : GLOW, Uncategorized, social media, web 2.0 , trackback
I noticed a story in the Edinburgh Evening news about a guy who had posted a video compiled from pictures of burnt out cars in Craigmillar on youtube. He did it to highlight the problem of joyriders in an attempt to get action from the council.
Its unusual in the fact that it’s a story about social media being used in a positive way to effect change. So often the press portrays social media as the harbinger of doom, with stories usually revolving around groups of youths videoing themselves misbehaving or a “celebrity” arguing that their civil liberties have been infringed after being caught on camera in a compromising situation.
Commentators that don’t understand the whole web 2.0 / social media “thing” choose to highlight the negative, and, alongside kneejerk reactions from the general public, call for it to be banned and shut down immediately.
If those concerned who wished social media sites closed looked a little past the hype they may be pleasantly surprised by what they see. They would see people sharing ideas, situations and information, to mention but a few things, in an infinite variety of ways that could not even be conceived of fifteen or twenty years ago.
GLOW, the Scottish schools national digital network, will be a gateway, ushering staff, pupils and anyone else with a vested interest in education into a new era. One of its underpinning philosophies and, for me, one of the most exciting aspects of it, is the inclusion of social media / web 2.0 applications.
In East Lothian, pupils and staff currently showcase and share their work on flickr,
a free website where you can upload and share your images with families and friends (or simply just search for images that you cant find on google).
Videos of fun experiments in science have been posted on google video, also free, enabling friends and families to experience modern science from the front line.
Policies are being developed via wiki’s, which allows anyone to comment on or change online documents.
Bubbleshare is being used in exciting ways to present information within classrooms.
These are just a few examples how the power of social / media web 2.0 applications is being harnessed by one relatively small local authority.
With GLOW providing a safe, secure web 2.0 learning environment, the use of social media will become commonplace and the experiences of staff and pupils in schools will begin to reflect the multimedia environment that we all live in these days.
If you are unsure what its all about, then please click on some of the links above and have a look for yourself. An excellent place to start would be the flickr account of Musselburgh Grammar School and see just what kind of images we have been posting recently.
elcouncil, glow, edu.blogs.com , web 2.0, social media, youtube, bubbleshare, flickr
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I like your flame tests JPEGs Brian. I have used some of your images in the past month too. In fact, when I searched for ‘flame test’ JPEGs, on flick, MGS was only one of the three to come up.
I have a few JPEGs on flickr, here (for flowers), and here for Science
I am planning to upload more alot more.
Tess
Have a look at this piece in today’s Guardian. It’s the story of Tom Steinberg, who turns out to have been behind the famously subversive faxyourmp.com, now - as fax has declined - writetothem.com. This quote of his could be a description of Exc-el:
There’s a bit about his next project, which takes the approach into local government.
Of course, local government includes education. Now if we were in his shoes, what would we be thinking of doing?
I don’t think Glow will be very Web 2.0 for those of us who use those types of tools on a daily basis. However, there is scope to import elements of Web 2.0 applications into your portal.
At the moment, I am working with RM and the BBC on my days off to provide something a little more Web 2.0-ey. It’s not easy, because of the moderation issue that both companies, were they to host material, would have to carry out. However, the tools to allow people to create material in a click are do-able.
LTS is actively creating tools for use internally so we can try to break them. If they are successful we can then look at rolling them out through Glow. The trick for us is to make sure that we don’t play catchup all the time, but that we innovate, too. Difficult for a small organisation like ours
Ewan, I hope that as GLOW develops and eveolves that more Web 2.0 type applications will become a standard part of the site, so that people who use these kinds of tools outside of glow can make maximum use of it in the learning and teaching process. People will appreciate the kind of rigorous testing that will need to be carried out before an application is made available to on glow. The lag is understandable but ,depending on the timescale, will it be acceptable?