I’ll propose you my presentation about Social Software that I made on 7th of May during the Arion Visit’s event in Palermo (Sala Gialla Normanni’s Palace)

Sorry is in italian but I will put the text in english in few days.

Part - 1

Part - 2

I’m waiting your comments and suggests.

Technorati Tags: Social software, web 2.0, european community, gianni messina, arion, Sala Gialla, Palazzo dei Normanni

We’ll never forget

Giovanni Falcone
Francesca Morvillo

Antonio Montinaro
Vito Schifano
Rocco Di Cillo

Technorati Tags: Falcone, Mafia, Capaci

What does Blog Strings mean?

The term ’strings’ refers to the ‘String Theory’ physics model, which seeks to bring together the forces of nature and particules using very small ’strings’ (which are about 10-35 metres long). By analogy, Blog Strings seeks to connect bloggers and readers from all walks of life.
…

Blogs String goal is to link to each other, users from blogs or communities allowing them to communicate via IM or emails.
People can search other users with the same interests into the blogs network.

Behind the Blogs String idea there is the String Theory.

Technorati Tags: String Theory, Social , Blog , Community

I’m searching to compute some ideas on social software, so I’m elaborating on these sentences…

“tools that depend on social convention more than on software features to facilitate interaction and collaboration.” (Stowe Boyd)
“humans are fundamentally individual and fundamentally social” (Shirky)
Interactions online with social software is governed by who we are
“Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live” (Levy and Stone)
While I read some post on different blogs I feel that sometimes we need to step back and produce quality and not quantity

The study of social software seems to resemble a study of human psychology, because we are examining how people interact (in a new environment).

Technorati Tags: Social Software

“Net Geners’ learning styles” is the right locution used by Kassandra Barnes, Raymond C. Marateo, and Sharmila Pixy Ferris (School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University), to indentify the new way of learning for students borned in Internet age.

A new generation of students, those born with the Internet already on, has recently begun entering the world-wide school system with a set of characterizing traits and unique learning interests that presents a true challenge to existing educational institutions.

It’s the start words of one of the most interesting article I’d read this year about Learning and ITC world.

Learning Independence: New Approaches For Educating The Net Generation on Robin Good’s Blog.

I want to highlight some sentences that interested me and that I’d like to deepen:

• The personal experiences of self-discovery, personal search and critical thinking that the Web has offered to the student.
• The students expect their mentors to use effective educational approaches. They abhor traditional one-voice lectures and demand engaging group assignments
• “What they want is “self-directed learning opportunities, interactive environments, multiple forms of feedback, and assignment choices that use different resources to create personally meaningful learning experiences, …more hands-on, inquiry-based approaches to learning…”
• The student not only are Net Geners acculturated to the use of technology, they are saturated with it (10,000 hours playing video games, 200,000 e-mails, 20,000 hours watching TV, 10,000 hours on cell phones, and under 5,000 hours reading (Bonamici et al. 2005)
• Net Geners have distinctive ways of thinking, communicating, and learning (Oblinger and Oblinger 2005)
• Digital Age students express a need for more varied forms of communication and report being easily bored with traditional learning methods
• Students use technology but they do not necessarily understand how their use of technology affects their literacy or habits of learning
• Net Geners’ use of the Internet for immediate access to information has taught them to expect immediate answers. This conditioning has made them, on the whole, less likely to accept delayed gratification in learning, both in the classroom and outside it
• computers and technology can be powerful teaching tools, but their potential is not fully exploited by educators who use them as isolated tools, disconnected from the processes of student life and learning (Papert 1993)
• “relationships in presence and in internet are a driving force in the learning process and learning through social interaction is important”

The media usage patterns by Net Generation’s Student

• Net Geners’ habituated use of media in many different formats. Multitasking is an integral part of the Net Generation lifestyle (8.5 hours of media usage into 6 hours..using different media simoultaneously )
• Net Geners report being bored in the traditional classroom
• he teachers have to move from the traditional lecture to discussion-based classes that allow for more individual expression
• Use of teamwork and reliance on experiential learning have become the norm
• One example is the use of blogs, “Write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone, can catch up on what they missed . Over the course of the semester, the scribe posts will grow into the textbook for the course; written by students for students.
  Ask yourself: “Is this good enough for our textbook? Would a graphic or other example(s) help illustrate what we learned?” And remember, you have a global audience, impress them.”
  (Darren Kuropatwa, “Harnessing the Power of Pedagogy”)
• A related use of technology to accommodate Net Geners’ learning style is the use of wikis “to change the individualism culture of traditional instruction to one of collaboration and a shared construction of knowledge” (Ferris and Wilder 2006, “Teaching and Learning with Wikis,”)
• The increasingly popular webplatform YouTube offers to students a model for produce video documentaries and showcases video projects in considerations of multiculturalism, openness to different views of history, and use of multimedia.

For a completion on topic upper mentioned I will suggest to consider also the use of Mesh-up aggregation, on line simultaneous test, role educational play.

Social interactivity

• The distinction between Internet tools for fun and for work is thus a blurry one.
• teach concepts of social networking, demonstrating a more effective appropriation of Net Generation lifestyle to foster critical thinking
• Educators must find ways to explore the skills students develope outside classroom, and expecially their digital life style

I’m starting a new way of learning just while I’m writing my blog, it’s an amazing new style that I’m developing now while I’m writing.

I’m surprised of what i feel in my own.