The review ‘Social Software and Learning’ picks up two converging trends in the education world: the necessity to equip pupils and lifelong learning audience with the necessary e-skills to address the challenges of the information society and the uptake of social networking tools such as wikis, blogs, or message boards. The Futurelab study shows how these two trends complement each other and are interrelated.

Knowledge and learning processes are changing, the authors write, characterised by multitasking, and ‘overlapping knowledge streams’. In the education sector there is a growing need for personalised, tailored knowledge spaces such as e-portfolios or other online collaborative knowledge spaces.

Wikis, blogs, instant messaging and other networking tools can be an answer to these new ways of learning, facilitating collaboration, feedback and helping build learning communities. The study points out the need to address the digital divide that may exist between those who master these technologies, and thus will be more competent, and other children who may be excluded.

The range of social software is growing and forms a motley patchwork ranging from video or picture sharing site (YouTube, Flickr) to community building areas (Myspace, MSN Communities); some even use eBay as community building tool. The potential for education is clear the authors of the study write. Participation in digital communication creates new habits and digital communication is now central to young people’s identities. The education world has to adapt to this trend and exploit these technologies to transform learning.

In a recent thematic dossier, Insight reported on innovative projects, some of which included the collaborative use of technology (Mudlarking in Deptford project in the UK). Other experiences flourish in schools, but still without a central policy to promote or even assess the benefit for the education world. The study rightly asks how to validate and recognise the learning that some young people already achieve through social software? Informal learning is also a central theme which needs to be addressed as it takes a special boost from the use of software social.

So far the growth of weblogs, wikis, and social bookmaking sites like del.icio.us; helped by the availability of cheaper technologies such as laptops, games consoles, PDAs and GPS, has offered new forms of creativity and collaboration unknown in the past. In this study, Futurelab precisely wishes to raise the question whether the activities social web will permit ‘education revolution’. A Special Insight Report (2005) elaborated on the use of social networking software to enable a more social online learning, but also to offer new ways of learning with peers. Other studies however (reported on the www.saferinternet.org portal) point to some of the dangers to young people of social networking and highlight the need for media education and awareness-raising for parents and teachers.

Read full report:
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/download/pdfs/research/opening_education/Social_Software_report.pdf

For additional information see:

Special Insight Report on Social networking software and e-portfolios:
http://insight.eun.org/ww/en/pub/insight/misc/specialreports/digital_knowledge_artefacts.htm

Thematic Dossier on Innovation
http://insight.eun.org/shared/data/insight/documents/innovation.pdf

Discussion “Social Networking: Philosophy and Pedagogy’
http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=6615

Picture credit: [Futurelab]