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

27 – Social Media for Adult Online Learners and Educators
“New technologies can communicate high expectations
explicitly and efficiently. Significant reallife
problems, conflicting perspectives, or paradoxical
data sets can set powerful learning challenges
that drive students to not only acquire
information, but sharpen their cognitive skills of
analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation”.
(Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996)
Social network blogs with the
working adult learner
“We are all natural lifelong learners. All of us, no
exceptions. Learning is a natural part of being human.
We all learn what enables us to participate in
the communities of practice of which we wish to
be a part”. – Seven Principles of Learning; IRL
The harnessing of collective intelligence through the use
and flexibility of social media leads to empowered learners
in enhanced learning conditions in a sometimes disordered
flow of active participative learning.
The increasing popularity of social media ‘by the
crowds’ and rapid software development have led to
significant financial investment in some programs and
have enabled further rich features. Some blogs now include
integrated forums for discussion, multimedia uploading
features, audio and video response features to
posts, and mobile connectivity. The ability to form single
owner blogs, group blogs, and social networks are
part of these enhanced features. Bloggers can choose to
keep their blogs private, accessible only to certain
groups or selected individuals, or to be available to the
public. Users have the choice. This sense of proprietary
emphasizes community and collaboration in blog-based
online learning.
Blogs are easy to use, allowing authors to edit their
written messages even weeks later. Bloggers can write
the content, personalize the look and feel of their individual
blog, group blog, or page within a network, and
carry out constant updates with minimum hassle or
knowledge of web-based applications. Unlike a wiki
which can allow universal editing rights to all users,
blogs allow only their authorized authors to edit their
own postings. For learning a language this is a particularly
rich feature, allowing the learner to correct their
own work after group or peer feedback, rather than depending
on a teacher’s correction. This shift towards
giving the learner control over the learning process enables
the learner to express him- or herself in an
authentic voice, facilitated, but not dominated, by a predetermined
syllabus. However, community-driven blogs
lack some advantages of traditional LMSs such as class
management, grade-tracking systems, attendance, and
individual student activity reports, which academia
normally requires.
Currently many social software programs are undergoing
substantial improvements and technological additions
in the quest to attract and engage the users. As
users adhere to these technologies, the requirement for
voice communication becomes more pertinent, especially
for language learning.
434 Education for a Digital World