Social Software for Learning Environments

D’Arcy Norman, Chris Lott, Sylvia Currie, and Jon Beasley-Murray combined forces examining a wide array of issues facing the integration of social software into the learning environment. At the core of these various discussions was the enigma of community -what makes an effective online community? How do we foster the process of allowing these spaces to be individual’s space as well as a self-organizing community? How do we think this in education? Does institutionalizing blogs, or any one blogging-platform, within a university necessarily allow for a space of contest, discussion and dissent? Should this space be part of the institutional logic, or a place to critique and question the locus of power of existing communities? This last question was a point John Beasley-Murray posed quite eloquently, making the enterprise question of scaling eduglu that much more rich and complex.

Additionally, Brian Lamb is quite a moderator: he managed to seamlessly work in a slam on Hummers and those who driver them!