Facebook.com and it's in some ways more capable companion, Ning.com, are definitely changing learning as they support people connecting in groups and sharing what interests them. Whether these tools will be useful as supports for communities of practice is yet to be seen, and in some ways, they are low-end collaboration systems as their primary functionality is to connect to others socially, share media, and more recently, to play games. From the CoP viewpoint, maybe they function best as discovery tools for those forming ad hoc communities of practice who then move to other platforms for true collaboration.
One potential should not be dismissed, which is the use of facebook to support learning across boundaries through games. An interview with Curtis Bonk by Robin Good suggests the potential of games like farmville and asks how we create educational games with that platform? I ask, who and what would we want to teach? And why? In this case, the boundary spanning potential for learning is like marketing -- it's to push awareness either for the direct purpose of learning/teaching a particular idea or the indirect purpose of capturing an audience.
Any suggestions?
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This is an intriguing concept. It's interesting that you are looking at facebook's Farmville because I was looking at Fishville and wondering if a similar game could be used to teach about actual aquatic ecosystems and the environmental threats to water quality. In my career, we've spent a lot of time focusing on children in our educational (marketing) efforts, when it's my belief that our focus should shift to include the same kids' parents - probably ages 25-40 who are becoming a large portion of social network users. I've added you to my blogroll so I can keep reading!
ReplyDeleteJessica, I like the concept of environmental learning though facebook. I haven't looked, but I would think there are grants out there for this type of development. I have a friend who works a lot of second life applications, and will check with her.
ReplyDeleteI'm also reminded of the book, "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams" by Mitchell Resnick. In his book, he argues that one of the key things people need for understanding the complex world is an understanding of systems. He gives some great examples of giving students control over key elements of simple systems, like forest fires, and how surprising the results are.