Education for a Digital World Advice, Guidelines and Effective Practice from Around Globe, 2008a

27 – Social Media for Adult Online Learners and Educators
Learning outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
• Have deeper insight in the social implications of including
social media software in e-learning with geographically
distributed adult learners.
• Understand and apply principles of adult learning
theory in planning for online learning with working
adults.
• Identify primary considerations for planning online
language learning.
• Select the most appropriate tools to ensure an engaging
learning experience.
• Create a simple and safe online environment.
Introduction
“Email preceded the Internet … blogs are ten years
old and wikis have been around since 1995 … If
most of this stuff is twenty years old, why are we
talking about it now? Because it’s not about the
tools, it’s about the people. The reason that it
matters now is that we are experiencing a seismic
shift—it’s about who can be brought together with
these tools”. – Ethan Zuckerman
Today, thanks to wide Internet and broadband adoption,
educators can develop and distribute materials and
resources, often co-created with their learners or developed
entirely by the learners. Among the emerging
technologies is a new generation of social software called
‘Web 2.0’, a term first coined by Tim O’Reilly (2005).
These emerging technologies, or emerging humanity as
Bryant (2007) states, use connectivism to enable social
and personal learning (Siemens 2004, 2005) to enhance
and promote lifelong learning.
Social media, in contrast to traditional media, uses
“the wisdom of the crowds” (Suriowecki, 2005) to collect,
create, and share information and it is particularly
pertinent to the online adult learner. Social software is
often available for free or a low cost, with no or little
maintenance. The ease and speed in setting up an online
supportive learning environment by independent, institutional,
or corporate trainers lends itself to ‘just in
time’ learning for one-to-one and small group learning.
Among the plethora of tools, with new programs
appearing everyday, blogs and wikis are going mainstream
in educational and corporate learning, often replacing
the costly CMS and LMS. The choice of
technology depends on the educator’s needs for a tool to
support any specific learning outcome with the predetermined
target audience and their learning needs.
Blogs or wikis can replace an LMS in one context but
perhaps not in another. The technology must fit the
pedagogical needs and not the reverse. Educators need
to develop a critical awareness of the tools available, and
the skills needed to use them, before choosing a technology
or technologies to support learning.
This article will focus on the blog, which to date, has
been adopted widely by non-technical educators for its
ease of use and maintenance as a publicly accessible web
application. The target learners are geographically dispersed
working adults, collaborating fully online in small
groups to enhance their language skills and competencies.
Going or gone mainstream
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect
new evils; for time is the greatest innovator”. –
Francis Bacon
Blogs or the concept of blogging has been around for
some time, with Sir Tim Berners Lee creating the first
website in 1991, Dave Winer blogging in 1996, and John
Barger coining the term ‘weblog’ in 1997. Since its first
appearance, the blog or weblog has come a long way, not
only being considered today as a creative medium to
publish personal thoughts and observations, but as a
means to fulfill other purposes for the users. It is now
mainstream, used by many to replace Web pages, content
management systems, and learning management systems.
Editable web spaces, free or at low cost, with no programming
or design issues, are now enabling the edu-
430 Education for a Digital World