Social Software and Education

Manuel A. Pérez-QuiñonesDepartment of Computer Science

Virginia Tech

Web 2.0

The Machine is Usby Michael Wesch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

We need to rethink...education

• Community of learners that go beyond the classroom, major, campus, town

• Community of educators ...

• Sharing of resources is the norm

• Information spreads faster than we can control it

• Collaboration take different forms

• social interaction is by both online and offline

Social Software is...

• ... software enables people to rendezvous, connect or collaborate through computer-mediated communication [Wikipedia]

• ...55% of all American youth (ages 12-17) use some form of social networking site [Pew Internet & American Life Project, Lenhart 2007]

Features of Social SW

• Goals vary - identify friends, resources, staying in touch, sharing interesting news...

• Connections - friends, “following,” groups...

• User-provided tags

• Commenting features... support discussion, collaboration, exchange

• Syndication in the form of RSS, ics, Atom...

• API - for the techies, build your own stuff

Goals of SSw

• Identify friends (facebook, okrut, friendster)

• education (campusbug, carmun, rateteachers)

• Share resources: movies (youtube), pictures (flickr), bookmarks (del.icio.us, SumbleUpon), status (fliker), news (digg, reddit), citations (citeulike), slides (slideshare), exams (koofers)...

carmun.com

Koofers.com

koofersM

y C

S 2

Cou

rse

@ K

oofe

rs.c

om

Beauty of Social Tagging

Joe

url_a

tag_x

Mary

tag_y

url_b

tag_y

• Free for all tagging, users pick their own tags

• But social network gives meaning to tags

• Joe receives as a recommendation url_b

citeulike.org

• Bookmarking for references

SSw APIs and Syndication

SSw APIs: Mashups

• Combination of multiple applications

• Google maps is a popular partner in mashups

http://perez.cs.vt.edu/peer-cs.html

SSw APIs: custom interfaces

• Syllabus collection

• Computing News, as a result of Google search

• Google COOP

Syndication: Embedding

Multiple Personalities

• On the web, everybody has schizophrenia

• Accounts in facebook, flickr, twitter, slideshare, etc....

Implications for Education

• the sky is falling, cheating is rampant, we are doomed

• Have a presence on facebook - make students know you are participating

• Post some pictures to flicker, movies to YouTube, slides to SlideShare

• Make use of embedded content, rss

• Make use of these examples in classes

• process rss, etc.

Implications for Education

• the sky is falling, cheating is rampant, we are doomed

• Have a presence on facebook - make students know you are participating

• Post some pictures to flicker, movies to YouTube, slides to SlideShare

• Make use of embedded content, rss

• Make use of these examples in classes

• process rss, etc.

DiversitySc

hola

rs o

f the

Fut

ure

NSF

Trip SIGCSE • Dinner with CREU students

CREU: Collaborative ResearchExperience for Undergraduates in

Computer Science and Engineeringhttp://www.cra.org/Activities/craw/creu/

Jaime

Crystal

Idris

TarishEmily

Gregg

Lauren Sarah

Sergio

Morgan

HCI REU

Questions?