I came across this article describing a social networking website for education! "Described by its founders as a 'learning landscape', Elgg provides each user with their own weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile and an RSS reader." It lets the users choose what tools they want to use and what content they want to share and with whom. It has all the necessary Web 2.0 tools all within - Blogging, file repository, podcast support, social networking just to name a few. It's a great source for a shared learning experience which can be restricted within a university. I found this quite interesting. The example of University of Brighton using Elgg provided some insights on how I can use this for the Math Lab. We could have students sign up for accounts and share their problems regarding a subject. We can have tutors who can monitor the specific topics. Sometimes the best answers to questions might even come from the other students, which will help answer the questions quicker! The students can also share their study sheets or download tutor prepared study sheets and reviews from the file repository. Supplemental Instructors can maintain blogs which give more information about what is being taught in class.
Link to Elgg : Elgg
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Also note the presence of our new (but long-in-development) eportfolio tool - keep an eye on our official blog for a post about this soon.
This looks really cool. Do you think that this is a site the students can use safely? My school is paranoid about students being exposed to outsiders. If it free as well.
The eportfolio looks great too. I will have to keep an eye out for that. They are piloting an eportfolio program in our district, but I am not involved in the pilot. I would love to have an eportfolio set-up for all my students.
This seems pretty neat. I have heard of elgg but have not experienced it. I spent some time trying to understand it and can see where it could be worthwhile in education. I think your idea about setting up accounts and letting tutors answers questions would be a great idea. I didn’t see many differences in this and say myspace( which I haven’t really ever used either) or a webpage. However, by offering students variety and choices may prove successful- the idea of building a community of learners that are trying to accomplish the same tasks can be very encouraging in itself.
Thank you Ben for your comments. I will keep checking your official blog and will probably research more about eportfolio tool and post my results in the next blog entry!
"Do you think that this is a site the students can use safely?"
Elgg provides good access controls. Users can decide for themselves who may see their posts, files etc. and community owners can control who joins their community and whether content is restricted to members of the community or available more widely.
We've now made details about the ePortfolio tool available on our blog, including a video run-through and a downloadable information sheet.
I agree with Vicki that this seems similar to the social networking sites like MySpace. However, if I understand correctly a community (school for example) can own and control their own social network, so if you are not a part of that school you do not have access to the non public posts and files. This would be an interesting concept to integrate at the middle or high school level to deveop across curriculum and grade level collaboration. The seniors at the school I am teaching at have to submit an end of the year paper that incoprorates history, religion, and English into one final essay. I am sure they would've liked a space to network and discuss ideas prior to writing their papers, because many of them struggled with determining a topic, and perhaps being able to network with others would've helped. I am incredibly interested in reading your upcoming posts on this topic.
Megan
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