The following is an abstract of a paper by Jacobs and Polson that explores the need for social interaction in a childs education.

In this paper, the authors contend that the strategies so far pursued in embedding mobile and social learning in to a curriculum framework have been implicitly flawed. Rather than allowing pedagogy to direct and shape educational experiences delivered via these emergent technology devices, the authors believe there needs to be stronger focus on the interaction between players in a learning context, including the pedagogue and standard information resources, but also accommodating further expert input/commentary and protocols that facilitate negotiated and evolutionary understanding. Interaction design aspects associated with engagement in learning need to be given greater consideration, in order to accommodate the benefits of these diverse technologies. Furthermore, testing and assessment processes for learning need to be adapted to accommodate the skills development directly associated with the particular learning channel. The paper is structured to demonstrate the ubiquity of mobile and social technologies and the need to acknowledge a ‘natural use’ for such technologies in learning and teaching. The authors assess the validity of arguments promoting Web 2.0 technologies in the context on interaction design models. They then present case studies in mobile and social learning, which aim to demonstrate the necessity of interaction design principles in planning curriculum and learning facilitation strategies. Finally, they propose a model for planning of teaching and learning by maximising the interactive effectiveness of emergent mobile and social technologies

After many people pressuring me to sign up to Facebook, i finally agreed to join today. It’s an interesting site where people can create their own space and then add friends to their network. This allows people to share thoughts, feelings, photos, messages and many other things with their networked friends. It is common for someone to post a message on your wall, poke you, send you a drink, create picture albums and join interest groups, such as the ‘Chasers war on everything appreciation society’ group. It is a good way to find old friends or keep in contact with new ones.

One benefit of Facebook over similar applications such as MySpace, is its aesthetic appeal. In MySpace, people design their own sites so it can look messy and is hard to navigate, whereas Facebook has a set template that can be slightly rearranged. This means that you can access anyone’s site and still know where all the links will be located. One man’s thoughts on the ‘ugliness’ of MySpace can be seen in this video by zefrank.

The downside to this programme is the constant email alerts you receive, though this can be turned off. Also, to try new things such as create your own virtual garden or virtual pet, you have to download more applications which can become rather annoying.

Del.icio.us is a really interesting site where people can add their favourite URL’s online rather than on their browsers favourite list. The reason this is a Web 2.0 application however is that you can network with friends or people with common interests and share links to websites you deem interesting or useful. When you add a site, you are informed how many other people have bookmarked it and can then link to them. This is a very useful way of connecting with people who share common interests as well. Whilst the sign up process is a little lengthy, the interface is incredibly easy and simple to use.

Benefits of this site include being able to access your favourites from any computer compared to the old system where it was only stored on your computer.

Downsides include the fact that others can view your links and so it looses an eliment of privacy.
My links and the connections they open are easy to view at the Del.icio.us site.

Wow, if you don’t have a yahoo account, signing up to Flickr can be rather irritating. There is a lengthy sign up process and email confirmation. However, if you have a yahoo account, all you need to do is enter that and you’re set. Flickr is a programme that allows users to create accounts where they can post photos to share with others, or just to create a photo album on the internet. It is possible to join same interest groups and thus share photos. For example, I joined the Holden vs. Ford group, which means I can now view lots of pictures of these cars and can post pictures of my own Holden on there. This allows me to connect with people who share an interest in these cars and thus allow me to interact and collaborate with others on the topic.

I fin Flickr really hard to use as it doesn’t have a very good interface. You have to figure out how to navigate the site on your own and figure out your possibilities or limitations yourself. The site’s graphics are also very basic and simple, so not very enticing to many of the people who would use it.

However, it was very easy to post my photo to the site and to join groups is relatively simple as well. This ease makes using the site a lot faster and gets rid of annoying loading and waiting times.

YouTube, when used correctly, has an amazing use in the classroom. It is the kind of research tool dreamed of for years. Students can use it to research topics through video. Many professors and authors tape interviews or lectures and post to the site, thus allowing very useful material to be available to all students with access to the internet. An example of this was when I was on prac at The Kings School and I took my Year 9 history Extension class to the computer room. The students instantly pulled up YouTube and within minutes they were watching snippets of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and listening to interviews with Dan Brown and leading religious leaders. This kind of information was much harder to access in the old Web 1.0 system.

Teachers can use programmes such as YouTube in various ways. They can give students links to videos to use when researching assignments, let the students research their own videos or even create videos of the classroom for the students to watch at home. The only problem with the last bit is there is no privacy on YouTube, so teachers would have to make sure they didn’t get students in the video and didn’t mind if others saw them teaching.

One benefit of using things like YouTube is that anyone can contribute, even students. This means that students can feel included in their learning, it can be self directed. This helps students feel they belong to the classroom and are more included socially. This is very important for a child’s development according to Dreikurs and Vygotsky.

Del.icio.us would be a very interesting programme that can be used in all classrooms. Teachers can create an account and then all the students can connect so that the class shares a network. This can then be used to share links and websites with each other for collaborative learning. For instance, students can post an interesting website they found on a particular topic to the site, and then all the other students have access to it. This means that the students are learning from each other and working collaboratively to create a database of useful information. Also, a teacher can post links to the site for the students to research for homework or assignments, rather than handing out a sheet of paper with the links written on it. This means the students have access every time they log onto the internet.

 found an article on Scobleizer’s Weblog. It was his thoughts on the idea of Facebook opening a hotel.

Think about how a business would change if it knew every one of its customers had a Facebook account.
I was thinking of a hotel/casino where when I walked in the iPod in the room was playing the music that I had set as my favorite on my Facebook profile. The digital screens in my room had all my photos and some random photos from my friends. My favorite movies and TV shows were on the video device. The bar knew my favorite drink and how I liked it made.
That got me thinking about how I’d change my business after I knew everything about my customers.

This thought really hit me about web 2.0. What kind of revolution could this create in business and education? Imagine if you could know everything about your customers or your students. What kind of service could you create. We are always told to interact with students on a personal level (E.g. find out interests and use them to build relationships) and now we have a way of doing this. If you have a tudents permission to access their site, you can see what music/tv/sport/movies etc they like. You can see if theyare mainly visual or prefer written. It can be like a window into their mind.

Blogs can be an incredible tool in the classroom. A teacher can set up a blog and then students link to it. This allows them to post anything they want the students to know online for all to see. This includes links, videos and pictures they want the students to see. Students can then post comments to the teacher as well as asking questions. It can create incredible class discussions and often the students dont even realise they are learning as they enjoy using these sites so much. A possible assingment can be for students to create blogs on certain topics and then post all the information they find on their and submit the assignment by handing the teacher the URL. These are only a limited number of uses for blogs in the classroom.

When studying Web 2.0, there is so much information on the internet available. One very good website on this topic is HeyJude. Judy O’Connell is a teacher librarian in the Parramatta diocese who created her blog with the intention of sharing the knowledge of Web 2.0 she has gained with others. With links to Judy’s Del.icio.us bookmarks , other educational blogs and sites/programs she has recently found, it is an incredible source of information for anyone interested in the evolving nature of the internet and its uses in the classroom.