Building Learning Communities on Microblogging Platforms

Carmen Holotescu & Gabriela Grosseck

Cirip.eu

CNIV / ICVL 30 October – 1 November, Iasi

Presentation Agenda

•A short introduction in Social Learning •What is microblogging? Uses in education •Cirip.eu – a microblogging platform for education •Learning communities on Cirip.eu

photos atflickr.com/photos/cosmin_coco_ro

flickr.com/photos/priviridesculte

SOCIAL LEARNINGA short introduction

RSS/blogs-2004, podcast–2005, vlog–2006, video–2007, microblogging-2008/2009

Web2.0 / social networks have great impact

in collaborative / social learning ( eLearning2.0 )

Enhancing teaching & learning using Web2.0 technologies

from Handbook of Emerging Technologies in Education: George Siemens, Peter Tittenberg (pg.34) ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl

INTRODUCTION TO MICROBLOGGING

What is it? And why should I care?

A collaborative definition of microblogging generated by oamos.com embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1645201

Microblogging is a collaborative technology, a new form of blogging, with brief text updates of 140 characters, via Web, SMS, email, IM or 3th party applications, which allows RT interactions between users.

Diagrammr at diagrammr.com/edit?key=dy4NKMc8XsZ embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1644841

photo: http://www.heikkironkko.com/images/yolehti_jaiku.jpg

Microblogging platforms used in education

Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Jan 2008 Sep 2008 Jul 2008Dec 2007 Mar 2008

Overview of the Microsphere Timeline

Twitter, Yammer, Cirip.eu, and Edmodo appear on Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/

HOW MICROBLOGGING CAN IMPROVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Scribd paper: Can we use Twitter for educational activities?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pandemia/354115976/sizes/l/

Classroom community Collaboration

Project ManagementAssessing opinion

Conference / research Virtual classroom

Learning experiences Personal Learning

Network Exploring the language

Reference services

good points:

distracting time-consuming

rude

addictive

no socialeducational value

bad grammar skills

privacy

spam

meaningless without a network

bad points

http://www.flickr.com/photos/80578657@N00/254923630/sizes/o

A slideshare presentation about collaboration on microblogging, embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1610057

A photopeach presentation for microblogging metaphors, embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/874542

The most popular microblogging system

Launched in July, 2006

Robust, elegant and simple

More than 160 million users

Numerous mash-ups

Social Social networking networking

in 140 in 140 characterscharacters

twittertwitter

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124372363@N01/2417123304/sizes/o

Twitter Educational uses:Classroom community

Collaboration

Project Management

Assessing opinion

Conference / research

Virtual classroom

Learning experiences

Personal Learning Network

Reference services

A video clip about twitter at dotsub.com embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1644958

7000 users

interface in Romanian, English, German

Cirip.eu - a microblogging platform specially designed for education; launched in March, 2008, by Timsoft, a Romanian company specialized in eLearning and mobile applications

Facilities Cirip.eu (1)

•public and private groups (courses, trainings, projects, events, internal communication, service, family, hobby, etc); group communication via SMS•polls, quizzes – online or via SMS•feeds monitoring (via SMS)(sites/blogs/social networks/search feeds – jobs, weather, reactions)•statistics, visualizations, tags.

Cirip.eu TUTORIAL

Facilities Cirip.eu (2)

multimedia objects embedded in messages (information/communication flow): - livestreaming,

- images (flickr, tinypic),

- audio (eok, trilulilu, deezer, blip.fm, vocaroo, mp3),

- (live) video (youtube, dotsub, vimeo, seesmic, 220.ro, myvideo),

- presentations (slideshare, capzles, voicethread, flowgram, photopeach, picasa,

notaland, prezi, diagrammr, screencastle, screenjelly, screenr,),

- documents (odf, odt, pdf, doc, xls, txt, ppt)

Cirip.eu TUTORIAL

PLN: users, groups, feeds

interactions online, via ciripfox/ ciripgadget/ciripAIR/FF Ubiquity, SMS, mobile, IM, mJava, API, twitter2cirip, rss2cirip

messages, images, audio, video (live), presentations, files

profile livestreaming cirip2twitter, widget, export notes on blogs

information and knowledge managementcourses enhancementdelivering entire online coursescollaborative projects in universitiescommunities of practiceePortfolios.

Personal Learning Environments ( Networks ) - PLE/PLN

Educational uses

Users

GrupuriFeeds Social networks

Mindmap at mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/29895908 embedded in the note at cirip.ro/status/1629920

An online course about microblogging platformsResearch:

•integrate microblogging with other Web2.0 technologies

•microblogging platform as LMS

•course facilitation

Materials:announcements

materials as LOM/SCORM objects

Course elements:

announcements

modules – imported as LOM/SCORM objects

collaborative exercises

multimedia messages

poll/quiz/ comments via SMS (f2f)

validation - interactions with users/groups

Participation:

built PLNs

42 members:

students, teachers, developers, librarians

1100 messages

Collaborative exercises using different Web2.0 technologies:•puzzle images - flickr, CC

•del.icio.us collection

•video translation - writeboard, dotsub

•comments on voicethread

•tagcloud - wordle

•code of good practices on microblogs - writeboard

Cirip.eu has facilities to deliver successful and qualitative online courses and to enhance courses; the communication (online/SMS/mobile), authoring, monitoring, statistical facilities make Cirip.eu a modern free LMS.

•Facilitating an entire online course or a part of a course on such a platform requires specific facilitation skills, and collaborative technologies knowledge.

•Participants gain important digital and communication skills, build PLEs, continue to collaborate in community after the course ends

Indicators:

Popularity

InfluenceCoagulation indexExposure indexGeographical distributionTemporal distributionOnline social presenceRating (RT)Notoriety (favorite)Sharing (Link)IntimacySpaMood Language

Connections/comunication

PLE/PLN relevanceePortfolio

More information at tinyurl.com/infocirip.