The ‘We Share…‘ series will be an ongoing thing and hopefully beneficial in understanding some of the barriers that practitioners / tutors etc face when learning how to the make the most of the social web in an educational context.

Let’s have a look at Delicious. All you need to start is a valid email address, you may already have one, you may have one or two. Ever thought of having one simply to sign up to all these services? as a kind of gateway? Anyway, back to Delicious. Again, we don’t want to tell you how to use it here, they do it much better than we could on their help page, so head over there to get started.
You can find all our bookmarks on there so add us into your network and we’ll do the same. similar to how we did on twitter. It’s up to you whether any of our bookmarks are of any use to you, but in any case, please let us know how you get on. Remember, it’s all about the conversation.

A few Social Bookmarking sites

Delicious

Stumble Upon

Furl

There are many ‘How To’ tutorials on searching the Internet and more specifically, Google. We have provided a few of them at the bottom of this page. Probably the best one is Google’s own. Have a go, see what you think. Then try the others and see how they compare. By all means, leave us a comment with your opinions or if you have any questions. If haven’t already joined Twitter, come and discuss it there. As long as you’re having a go and talking about it, that’s what counts.

Just a quick note that Google has now become much more than a search engine, but for our little experiments, the searching will do for now.

Using google web search

GoogleTutor

Google Guide

The Social Web is currently used to describe how people socialize or interact with each other throughout the World Wide Web. Such people are brought together through a variety of shared interests. There are different ways in which people want to socialize on the Web today. The first kind of socializing is typified by “people focus” websites such as Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person as focus of social interaction. To do this a profile is constructed by each user. In many ways the profile is similar to a passport.

The second kind of socializing is typified by a sort of “hobby focus” websites. For example, if one is interested in photography and wants to share this with like-minded people, then there are photography websites such as Flickr, Kodak Gallery and Photobucket.

There are also two ways in which people socialize with each other in the Social Web. The most general and most common type is always at a distance and only on the World Wide Web. In such socializing there is never face to face personal contact. Much of the socializing on Flickr is sharing of photos and making comments on the photos of others. However, where Flickr members come from a common local geographical area, then they are inclined to get together physically for a common photoshoot. This exemplifies the second type of socializing through the World Wide Web: that which leads to real physical contact. Typical examples of the latter arose historically from social networking both within and outside schools and colleges. Facebook’s origins are in the facebook of college students from Harvard University.

The Social Web may also be used to refer to two different, yet related concepts. The first is as a description of web 2.0 technologies that are focused on social interaction and community before anything else. The second is a proposal for a future network similar to the World Wide Web.

In terms of digital inclusion and adult learning, this can be the thing that currently ties everything together. Get involved with the social web, find the relevant networks and start sharing resources, news, applications - anything you like really.

There is a lot of stuff out there and it can be tricky knowing where to start. We like to get people using this stuff straight away so as we’re here, maybe we can get things going using a simple online application called ‘Twitter‘. This application is best described by the blurb on their website…

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

You only need an email address and password to start using Twitter and it’s really easy. Once you have registered, go to our twitter page and click ‘Follow’. We then get a message telling us that you are following us, we’ll follow you too. From then, we can send each other messages or ‘tweets’ about anything at all. In this context, it could be about learning resources and how to find them, other social web stuff, answers and questions..etc. From ‘following’ us, you can also follow any other relevant Twitter user and so we start to build our network of people who know stuff! probably more importantly, we start the conversation. It’s best understood by example so go get yourself a twitter account and we’ll show you where things can go!

http://www.twitter.com/

I’m sorry to be critical as I’m really supportive of NIACE’s aims, but this whole conference approach really needs shaking up. I spoke to a number of participants at the conference each of whom commented that they hoped to learn something from the event, take back something they can use. The only participation came during the afternoon sessions (knowledge cafes!) but this was really limited. The event speakers did a round table discussion about their own projects. NIACE announced a new project that they have provisionally entitled ‘TV Club’ where adult learners, or groups gather to discuss a specific TV programme and discuss the production methods behind it. Rachel Thompson, Senior Development Officer for NIACE spoke about the possibility of including ‘websites’ in the project too…

The conference didn’t offer wi-fi access but then again, I was the only one slightly puzzled by this apparent ignorance of current technology uses, so it wasn’t really that surprising. Throughout the event, I was online using Twitter to update colleagues on key parts of proceedings and to find out further information on the speakers and their projects. A bonus of being in the Twitter world was that I was able to keep in with another ‘key’ conference that was also on that day. I was hoping to use it as an example of current social media, but the conference just wasn’t that ‘engaging’ and that was a big shame.

Overall I was quite concerned about the lack of knowledge on current digital trends and how they can be harnessed. Maybe this will be addressed at the Digital Inclusion conference, also hosted by NIACE next week. I’m hoping it will definitely be addressed at the Digital Mentor workshop happening today. Which would have been the cooler option to attend this week. But i’m glad I attended this conference. It’s one thing to get excited about advances in the tools and roles, but another thing entirely in recognising the gaps, pitfalls and barriers.

Now the why….

Having spent the last five or so years working with ESOL learners, not directly as a tutor, but supporting and encouraging technology usage, I have been keen to explore how we can make good use of all this online stuff. The current tools available to both tutors and learners are of varied use and as per usual, spread all over the web. So the idea is in the first instance, is to gather a selection of tools, blogging, video, audio recording and make these available to learners in an easy to access manner. Then, show them how to make the most of these tools to support their learning. This is what it’s all about? yes, but…..
There is an increased awareness about access to technology and how we encourage those with limited IT literacy. There are many reasons why people can’t or won’t access the technology. In this case, we are faced with language and cultural barriers. The idea is to increase the confidence of the learners, to encourage them to dabble with the tools and to not be afraid. Again, staple aims of our project, but now we’re looking Family Learning as a possible route into achieving sustainability. By involving “the kids” who of course have no fear of technology, we can maybe encourage the learners to try the technology away from the classroom. Combine this with routine classroom access to technology, supporting their learning, we can begin to embed this approach to learning as standard, not gimmicky or off putting.
We are planning some sessions in the very near future to trial this approach. If we can (a): develop an interactive, usable system of web tools for learners / tutors / managers etc, and then (b) increase learners access to this system - we can assess if the technology can really make a difference. If we get some positive results (and i’m quite confident we can), we are looking further down the line to creating an online resource that will be available to anyone wanting to improve their English, for free.

The guys and girls at Grapevine today were part of a media skills course, led by Denise Stokes, they are learning about how news works - what makes it and how it’s told. The course already has a blog — but at the moment it’s written by the tutors, by the end of the course the hope is that the trainees will have taken over.

We split the group into two, and tried to find out what each person wanted from the internet — the replies ranging from “the news” to “Elvis”.

There are already a couple of keen photographers in the training group, so Flickr seemed a good way to get everybody involved. First we looked for some pictures of The King, and Geraldine was really happy to find a group of photos of Elvis impersonators — nine Elvi obviously being better than one. We forget so easily how the simple skills of being able to find things on the ‘net that we enjoy can open up tons of opportunities — a ‘divide’ that can be so easily crossed if done in an engaging way.

The next stage was to get someone up and running and sharing, so Alan (already very into photography) took a photo and had his own Flickr account within minutes.

Alan didn’t have an email address, so as part of the sign-up he now has a Yahoo email account — the email account can act as a gateway to other social media sites in the future, we don’t have to think of that as a communication end in itself. We also tried delicious, both as a way of remembering favourite sites and to find new ones. Stuart’s group went as far as to create a blog - all in under the hour that we spent directly working with the trainees.

I was pleased that our concept of starting from an existing interest and building towards sharing worked well as a method of engagement, it doesn’t seem the most original of concepts but a lot of more formal approaches would struggle to work with a group of such differing abilities and interests. I think we would have liked more time, more computers - so everyone could try something at once - and maybe even a chance to try some video blogging. Video is a hugely accessible blogging method for people who may find typing or reading difficult, and something that we think will work well with this group.

A lot of agencies or bodies are obsessed with the ‘risk’ to children or vulnerable adults, but in truth the risk is a lot less than anyone would encounter in the real world. Also as Darren Cannan, our first contact with the Grapevine team who Stuart met at a Birmingham Social Media Café, says risk is something that everyone needs to learn how to deal with — the manageable risk of online interaction is even a good lesson in this regard.

It’s really heartening that Grapevine are attempting to open up access to social media. Access to the technology is pushed from many angles, but the fun (even forgetting the real value) of connecting online is something that really should be available to all.