This is an article published in December 2003 by Learning Circuits . Learning Circuits represents the source for E-learning of ASTD (American Society for Training & Development). The article author, Eva Kaplan-Leiserson, is associate editor for Learning Circuits and T+D magazine. This article is a brief one and nicely introduces the topic of social software and learning.

Social software gives supports for conversational interaction between people or groups, social feedback, and social networks. Examples includes instant messaging, collaborative workspaces, weblogs, and expert management software.

Early e-learning traded technology for human interaction. Now, the personal element is being added back in. New social software tools borrowed from business and the younger generations combine tech and touch for the best of all possible worlds (including virtual ones).

Social software takes a bottom-up approach and enables people to organize themselves into a network based on their preferences.

Creative Commons and Yahoo! go together to offer search tools for searching content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. If you do not know what creative commons is and how it works, this page from the Creative Commons site provides a great overview. The comics the site provides is interesting and clear to illustrate the ideas.

Yahoo! Creative Commons Search Beta

Why is this search different?
This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons license. While most stuff you find on the web has a full copyright, this search helps you find content published by authors that want you to share or reuse it, under certain conditions.

Creative Commons Search

Full copyright applies to most stuff on the web. But this search helps you find photos, music, text, and other works whose authors want you to re-use it for some uses — without having to pay or ask permission.

This is an article from Parents.com (America’s family magazine). It reminds me about some simple strategies to nurture the kind of kid who love to learn. I totally agree all of the points the author (Ginny Graves) made in the article. Here I extract some of the points for sharing and for my future reviewing. Read this article in Parents.com.

1. Share Your Passion: Talk to your child about interesting things you’ve learned. Explain in simple terms what happened and why you found it so interesting.
2. Surround Her with Books. Consistent access to books can increase a child’s motivation to raed.
3. Build on Your Child’s Natural Interests
4. Know When To Back Off. Those who have the most motivated children didn’t micromanage or pressure their kids. They let their children figure things out for themselves, while still showing their support.
5. Ask the Right Questions. If you want your child to stay excited about learning, it’s much better to engage him in an active inquiry than to ask him to spit out routine knowledge.
6. Avoid Rewards. Offering kids a prize for doing something can actually undermine their pleasure in the activity.
7. Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome.

This website has good resources and information about learning. It also suggests articles and books for those who are interested in how learning and curiosity influence people. Topics include children’s learning, informal learning, whole-body learning, and culture issues.

I saw this term when I explored Moodle (a free, open source course management system for online learning) via Moodle.org.

The following are four main concepts behind it:

Constructivism: people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.

Constructionism: it asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience.

Social Constructivism: this extends the above ideas into a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.

Connected and Separate: Separate behaviour is when someone tries to remain ‘objective’ and ‘factual’, and tends to defend their own ideas using logic to find holes in their opponent’s ideas. Connected behaviour is a more empathic approach that accepts subjectivity, trying to listen and ask questions in an effort to understand the other point of view. Constructed behaviour is when a person is sensitive to both of these approaches and is able to choose either of them as appropriate to the current situation.

It is claimed that the design and development of Moodle is guided by that “social constructionist pedagogy”. It suggests that “the job as a ‘teacher’ can change from being ‘the source of knowledge’ to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.”

The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (CJLT) is an open-access and peer-reviewed journal. Manuscript can be of various categories: research papers, literature reviews, critical scholarship, position papers, evaluations, case studies, and instructional development reports. All articles can be reproduced for non-profit use without permission provided credit is given to CJLT.

The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology is a peer-reviewed journal that welcomes papers on all aspects of educational technology and learning. Topics may include, but are not limited to: learning theory and technology, cognition and technology, instructional design theory and application, online learning, computer applications in education, simulations and gaming, and other aspects of the use of technology in the learning process. Manuscripts may be submitted either in English or in French.