original version available on his blog: http://ardao.blogspot.com/2010/12/por-que-prefiero-una-red-social-frente.html
Lately I've been raised in different discussion forums about whether a social network platform (hereafter RS) can be or not an alternative to the LMS (Learning Management Systems) as a teaching platform. In some cases, such as students with whom I debated on this blog entry TIC-TAC, I could not get rid of the vision such as Facebook and could see what it is a social network from the educational point of view and what can contribute in this aspect compared to LMS like Moodle or Claroline (used in our University of Vigo). At the opposite pole are the students of teachers enthusiastic pioneers, such as @ or @ vnovegil daniel3, among others, have found a breath of fresh air in the brand new Social Network UVIGO (perhaps also found more work). They see it more clearly, perhaps because experience has proved sufficiently illustrative, and would like even the other teachers follow this path.
is why it seemed interesting to me express my opinion in this blog, I also can use it as a reference, rather than going by leaving comments scattered across multiple forums. On the other hand, this dichotomy between RS and LMS has also been one of the goals I have asked that would have raised in my recent participation in edusol 2010, and summarize here some of my speech there.
First, the difference perhaps more importantly in my opinion between the two is that an LMS is organized exclusively around a set of virtual classrooms (groups in a network), in this case, are private, closed and interconnection between them. That is, we are basically at a group of islands. This implies that
• The classroom resources are not accessible from the outside, making it impossible to interact (comment, highlight, replicate, voting, etc.). "In situ", or something fundamental like being able to link those resources from abroad.
• There is no "social life" in the educational community outside the classroom. The only possible relationship is between students and teachers in one classroom. You can not discuss, participate, ask, answer, comment, comment, vote, chat, connect, collaborate, share, evaluate, etc. •
community There is the possibility of "search" on the platform (tags or folksonomies) people and resources of interest, or to receive recommendations, using, for example, mechanisms based on data mining or pattern matching, which is becoming more important.
• No option to subscribe and follow the public activity of a person or group of interest (without joining the group)
In contrast, the LMS has had the benefit that is designed specifically for teaching, and includes both many tools and features to it, functionality is not present in a generic network. We refer to activities such as tests, questionnaires, increase in jobs, skills, among others.
Having said this, the first question we must ask is whether an RS can be used as an LMS. And I think the answer is clearly yes. Although the task of development is quite complex, it is simply add the desired functionality within social networking groups.
The next question is almost immediate. Can the LMS be used as a RS?. The answer now is also clear, but opposite sign. In this case it is not just adding functionality. It is a matter of design philosophy from its inception. A LMS can only be a RS when designing a RS, that is, when considering social relations in all its breadth and, particularly, when given an essential role in decision-making capacity of every member on the levels of read / write access to all resources and contributions.
seems abundantly clear that the LMS are well suited to support the traditional formal learning, built on explicit and default, centered and closed in the classroom and around the teacher. But if we look at the latest report "Horizon Report" 2010, the prestigious association of educated Americans, we see that among the 10 trends for the future of ICT and Education are:
• Informal learning, built on knowledge tacit, where the protagonist is the student and personal learning network.
• Open Content generated by teachers and students
• Social games
And here the LMS, rather than to support or assist, constitute obstacles difficult to overcome to address at least some of these trends, clearly targeted toward the realm of social networks. On the other hand, if only in the case of sensations, I would say that the RS to engage more student and teacher, for many different reasons, which basically summed up the feeling that you're in a place where there are more people many more people. Instead, an LMS is perceived more as a computer program, which is much colder, petitioned to do something very specific like some notes down, climbing a task, do an activity and little else.
No wonder so be increasing the number of teachers, as mentioned earlier, that migrate into social networks, even if they are of a general nature and not designed for education (see article on blog book by my dear friend @ jjdeharo) as is sufficient for many their ability to post documents and communicate through a forum, which is what they were doing in Moodle, but now on a network.
is precisely the lack of educational platforms social networks based on what has motivated from Networks Laboratory UVigo we decide to create the spin-off SocialWire Labs, also developer of the Social Network of UVigo. The sole purpose of SocialWire Labs is to create an educational platform with all with all the power and possibilities already mentioned in a RS, but also has all the functionality of a LMS for formal learning. And for this we start from the core of an open source project like Elgg, which is a basic network platform. Why not start with Moodle? Because Moodle is not feasible to convert a social network. It is a question of philosophy!.
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