Facebook as a Learning Tool?

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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If this is the Frontier, where are the Boundaries?

We start learning early before going to primary school, and if we survive higher-ed, then we keep learning. I purposely didn't call this blog the "Education Frontier" as I wanted to ensure that we don't limit ourselves (me and you all) to the standard practices of the U.S. based education system. Surely, those practices themselves are changing, and to help accelerate them, we need to look outside the global education system, and look where learning is happening.

As an example of non-school learning, one of my best learning experiences was working in computer science at the same time I was studying it in my bachelors. I was writing visual basic and Z80 assembler programs for career exploration funded by the State of Kansas. While my professors were criticizing Basic as a toy language, I was learning what made for effective and ineffective interfaces, search algorithms, and the business of applied problem solving. I never took a class that was as effective as working with real customers. Decades later, I discovered that this is learning in the "Legitimate Peripheral Participation" style defined by Lave and Wegner published 10 years after my experiences.

There are many types of learning, and to push the frontiers, we have to push the models and the technology that implement them. What are your favorite examples of great learning?

Social Learners

Learning starts social - the feeling of our mother holding us, feeding us, and the love response within. As we grow, our world widens to include the people who talk to us, who show us things, and make us laugh or cry. As we learn, the world around us learns about us and with us. Our wonder reflects in them.

We are social learners from the beginning. And it never ends.

Please join together to explore our ever expanding world, testing new social technologies and content, new relationships, and new models.