Social media and literacies

What does a social media classroom look like? a collaboratory?

An eight-minute video created by Howard Rheingold gives us a glimpse of the affordances of an integrated environment incorporating social media tools like Delicious, Twitter, blogs, Flickr and wikis. Howard tells us know to worry about keepng up with technologies, it is better to try and keep up with the literacies and pedagogies that technologies can provide.



Are you really reading when you go online?

This NY Times article explores the debate about the effects of ICT on reading in the digital age. Many children are engaged in reading fragmented, non-linear and somewhat variable quality of online text. Will this lower literacy levels? As usual this is a complex issue with no easy answers.



The one-to-one computer experiment

In Birmingham, Alabama some school students have been given the green and white XO laptop as a pilot of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. Will this program work? e-school news reports as educators in the US look on.

What about videoconferencing ...

The NSWDET Connected Classrooms Program Bulletin No. 3 listed ideas from students about who they would like to talk to via videoconferencing:

• Other Student Representative Councils
• HSC experts including past students
• Experts in English
• Authors
• Successful business people
• Political figures
• WWII survivors
• Music teachers
• Native speakers of languages other than English (students also would like to talk to students in schools overseas).

How interesting! Now what does the research suggest about the impact of videoconferencing in the classroom and the factors associated with effective use.

• The evaluation report for the UK’s DfES Videoconferencing in the classroom project (.pdf) suggests there is clear evidence of the educational potential of videoconferencing and identified a number of factors associated with effective use (e.g. support from senior staff, careful preparation and planning, robust technical support, links to relevant events and curriculum support). No surprises here!

So, what are we doing in Australia?

• DET: Western Australia
• DECS: South Australia

In NSW, we are supporting schools via TaLe with information and examples of why, when and how to use videoconferencing (TaLe links can only be accessed through the Department of Education and Training portal).