The learners – faculty and staff from the various language departments at the Ohio State University – were a very curious bunch with genuine desire to incorporate 2.0 facets along with a healthy dose of ‘how the heck will Facebook and MySpace help in my class?’ feeling. We dove into the intros and rise of Web 2.0 and some major pedagogy (heavy!) and looked into adding 2.0 aspects into the classroom. Blogs (with Blogger) and Wikis (with PB wiki) were the natural candidates for hands-on creation and we went into these with very little difficulty, with occasional questions. By the time we completed creating these, time was ticking away.Facebook and Myspace has some educational merits, but the returns seem minimal to me. I like the collaborative efforts these social networks provide, but long-term gain is debatable. I think video upload sites like Youtube certainly can be a strong educational tool as well. Podcasts and vodcasts are great tools for sure, but the efforts needed to create these are not small.
The bottom-line (as suspected) was that faculty are willing to learn and incorporate these tools into their curriculum, but time is a deterrent. Additional technical guidance and support can help pave the way for 2.0 in classrooms.
Technologies: Web 2.0, Blogs, Wikis, Social Networks, Podcasts, Video-sharing, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace.
Contact me:
Sujan Manandhar
Instructional Aids Associate,
Foreign Language Center
Ohio State University
Though this workshop took a long time to prepare, I was thrilled with the delivery. I thought the learners were excited to learn about new facets that they could potentially use in their classroom. I am waiting to see some REAL pages.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Facebook and Myspace are great for networking, but are we ready to use these as educational tools?
ReplyDeleteI did not attend the workshop, but I have an observation on FB. Facebook has a chesiveness that we can tap for educational. Currently students migrate to it for all kinds of resources and class reosurces can also be a part of this. Maybe this will change over time, but....
ReplyDeleteI did attend the workshop (though I was a bit late because of a faculty meeting), and I found it very helpful and immediately useful. I had been frustrated by the lack of a real collaborative workspace in Carmen [OSU's blackboard system], and thanks to Sujan's overview I was able to kick-start my class wiki in a matter of hours. They are already using it. The truth is, my students didn't even really notice the change in web-environment from "inside" the university system to the PBwiki site. We will see how our wiki develops over the next few weeks and I will post a link to it if/when we make it public.
ReplyDeletejml