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Glossary of 'Social Software' terms in education
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Definition: A free blog providing service aimed specifically and exclusively at the education sectors
Use in Education: Blogs produced with edublogs, are advertising free, (so no risk of adverts for Gambling, Viagra, or essay writing services appearing next to a tutors entry) - They can be used by staff or students, they are easy to set up and use.
Link to Example: Dave Foord's Blog - uses Uniblogs, part of the edublogs family.
EduSpaces
Definition: An open-source social networking blog specialising in education.
Use in Education: Useful as a learning tool, especially for teachers / students wanting to reflect on educational issues and developments, eg e-learning.
Link to Example 1: http://eduspaces.net/
embed code
Definition: Most of the Social Software sites that house media such as videos will often produce something called 'Embed Code' - this will be be a line of HTML text (the language the internet is programmed in) - which refers to that specific item. All someone has to do, is copy this text, and then paste it into their blog, wiki, VLE or similar.
Use in Education: If you want to use video with your students, and your organisation does not have streaming capability, one of the video sharing sites could be used, the tutor takes advantage of the video streaming capacity of the site, and all they then need to do is find the embed code which they could then put into their VLE for example.
Link to Example: The Video below, is showing how to carry out the perfect golfswing. The video is from a site called www.videojug.com - and it saves a tutor having to create their own footage - the advantage for the students is they can watch the video over and over again if they need to. Once you have learnt how to, it takes seconds to insert embed code into a site.
eSnips
Definition: eSnips provides online space to host your own materials. Unlike YouTube and Flickr, it does not host JUST one type of resource. On eSnips, you can leave PowerPoints, Word Files, Excel Files etc. alongside video clips and images if you like. It is free to join and offers you the chance to store items privately or publicly. Of course, if you host the item(s) publicly others can comment on your work and you can comment on the work of others too. Which of course, adds a communicartion dimension.
Use in Education: Where learners are not engaging with your VLE (or perhaps they don't have access to a VLE - such as many ACL or WBL learners), materials can be placed on eSnips for them to access from a URL you give them. If planned correctly they can download a variety of learning opportunities which you provide. A scary example would be where they provide access to their own sites - having published things demanded by you?
Link to Example: This is still building up (and consequently untidy) so if someone has something better for others to see please overwrite [ http://www.esnips.com/web/dsugdensOtherStuff ] I use it because I don't have a VLE.
Elgg
Definition: An open-source social networking platform.
Use in Education: Can be integrated with Moodle 1.7 (not tested) and there's a new JISC/Elgg project called Emerge.
Link to Example 1: http://www.elgg.org
Link to Example 2: http://emerge.elgg.org
As part of the development of the Elgg project, and to help provide clarity bewtween the Elgg tool, and the service which being provided at Elgg.org the company now hosts Elgg accounts using the Eduspaces site. This is an instance of the Elgg tool for those interested in innovations in learning technologies. (see above)
http://eduspaces.net/
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