WE/ME in epedagogy design

I have been teaching a course on social software. During this I decided that Facebook offers a very good front end for a lot of “serious” activities, including the epedagogy MA. I have therefore started an epedagogy group in Facebook. So far it has 5 members, and a link to this site.

It would be very good if everyone else on the course (past and present, staff and students) would also join Facebook, message me and then apply to join the group. (I have set it as a closed group so you have to apply to join. This stops people messing around with it.)

I think we could use this as collective action research. My initial hypothesis is that using this as the front end to our online networking will be good because we will then get a richer picture of each other, and this will enable us to engage in more fruitful collaborations.

BTW, for those with genuine privacy concerns Facebook is VERY privacy conscious. You can set everything to be viewable only by your friends, if you want - and people can only become your friend by applying to you and waiting for you to say yes or no. It is absolutely NOT like MySpace, Bebo, or similar sites.

Later that same day:

I wrote a slightly longer argument in favour of this on my site (which is now being updated again) here.

Tags:cooperative media culture, epedagogy, Informal learning, learning spaces, organisation, Self organizing social software

During the recent Helsinki international seminar the participants formed 3 working groups based on their preference of 3 different discussion topics to brainstorm the issues and possibilities within these topics and to ultimately come up with a research topic proposal.

In Working Group 1, Wey-han, Arie, Antti, Ville, Lynda, and myself, with Martti’s assistance, had the pleasure of engaging and brainstorming the topic titled, “Envisioning new interfaces in cooperative media culture”.

Arie introduced an interface problem encountered by the medieval scholars when operating the new interface of the “Book” (as presented in the short sketch Medieval Helpdesk on the Norwegian show “Øystein og jeg”).

We developed a stronger understanding for what an interface is and potential problems surrounding the interface, as presented in the brainstorming map linked to the image at the right. Most importantly we identified that when engaging the topic of interfaces there are a number of visual, conceptual and metaphorical aspects which need consideration. During discussion in the working group and following our presentation we identified that there may be two approaches to considering this topic, from the perspective of the physical interface (buttons, keyboards, mouse, etc) and also the virtual interface (windows, browsers, web interface etc).

We identified and presented our research proposal, however we understand that it will require further discussion and fine-tuning in the coming weeks:

“To consider the visual, conceptual and metaphorical elements of interfaces in a learning context for inexperienced user groups.”

Tags:2007, 4th international seminar Helsinki June 2007, cooperative media culture, interface, project group, project work working group 2