Instructional Technology
Conference 2007
Title: Enhancing Student Learning through the use of Social Software: Wikis, Blogs and Podcasting
Name: Stephen R. Chastain
Audience Level: beginning, intermediate
Audience: faculty, instructional technology specialists, general
Length: 1 hour
Abstract:
Social software provides opportunities for learners to participate actively in learning. Discover collaborative technologies such as Wikis, Blogs and Podcast that will help ensure key concepts are understood and reinforced. Enable students to listen to class lectures, topical podcast, and write collaboratively. Participants will learn the basics of using Wikis, Blogs and Podcast as tools to enhance learning.
Description:
The ability to collaborate on classroom projects is growing stronger each day as more and more educators become involved in the technology of blogs, wikis and podcasting (social software). These three very important tools will prove to be a turning point in education. Blogs, Wikis and Podcasting are useful tools for helping students work together on projects, express themselves, and listen to topical information that reinforces lectures. Social software provides opportunities for learners to participate actively in learning. The internet in its simplest form is an information space where everyone is allowed to express themselves and share knowledge, a place where learning takes place, and a place for building community.
Podcast was the 2005 New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year, and Blog was the word of the year for Merriam-Webster. Wikipedia has grown to more than 1.8 million articles and is only slightly less accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica demonstrates the power of the Wiki. As educators grasp the vastness of social software they are seeking way to connect their classrooms with this technology.
Social software such as Blogs, Wikis and Podcasting contribute to learning in several ways: helps the auditory learners, provide a channel for review of materials, assist on-native speakers, provide feedback to learners, enable educators to review training or lectures, present full lectures and or guest speakers, and provide supplementary content. Social software will never replace reading, listening to lectures or other means that learners take in information, but it will add to the many tools educators use on a regular basis.
Session Type: Lecture/Presentation
Contact information/affiliation:
Stephen R Chastain
src@utk.edu – 865-974-4475
Office of Information Technology,
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Ph.D. Candidate in Instructional Technology.