Changing the learning landscape

Changing the learning landscape is a one day workshop on social media and learning in higher education that will be held at the University of Warwick on April 24. It's funded by the Higher Education Academy and the strap line for the event is interesting, intending to cover the 'realities of social media in learning and teaching: Making effective, safe, efficient and appropriate use of social media'. Clearly this is an important area of development for all education professionals, in whatever sector they work. Digital literacies (human attributes) and technology must work in tandem if we are to ensure the safe, appropriate and effective use of any social media tool. I'm looking forward to participating, and hope to learn much, because the blurb from the flyer promises much:

Social media turns the traditional static web into a participatory and collaborative experience. Social media enables individuals to discuss, share, and learn via different kinds of media, such as text, video, photos. The use of social media is increasing within higher education to teach and support student learning. The range of different social media platforms is ever expanding and it can seem quite daunting trying to navigate through this and find effective methods for learning and teaching. This workshop will discuss a range of social media platforms and provide examples of their use within learning and teaching.

This workshop will offer focussed support for strategic innovation and institutional change in the use of technology to enhance the student experience within learning and teaching. With examples of practice coming from a range of disciplines this event will look to inspire leadership of pedagogic development of the use of social media platforms. Through a series of presentations, activities and discussions, led by expert speakers, this one-day workshop will introduce you to social media approaches within learning and teaching and provide opportunities to explore how such techniques could be used in your own practice.

I have the privilege of being the first speaker for this event, and my topic is: 'Social Media and Learning: Content is a Tyrant, Context is King.' Here's the abstract:

"Social media is a fertile terrain for networked learning, and has many popular facets, but there are also issues and challenges. 'Content is king' was an aphorism that Bill Gates used to describe the capability of the web to deliver knowledge in a democratic and open manner. Now, however, with exponential increases in activity and a massive upsurge of user numbers, social media of all kinds are being used to generate content. Such user generated content can be found on YouTube (over 70 hours uploaded every minute) and Vimeo, images on Flickr, Facebook and Snapchat, and other content on a myriad of blogs, wikis and other content sharing platforms. What are we to make of all this content, and how can we make sense of, and filter it? Content is no longer king, it is now a tyrant, and for many is unmanageable. A new generation of social media tools is emerging to help us cope with this tsunami of content. Social tagging and bookmarking, aggregation and curation tools allow for content to be filtered, managed and for value and context to be added. In this session we will explore some of these tools and discuss their place in a time when higher education is having to adapt very quickly to the rapid advances technology is making."

The Twitter hashtag to follow will be #CLL1314

Photo by Genial 23


Changing the learning landscape by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.