%0 Journal Article %1 Ravenscroft09 %A Ravenscroft, A. %D 2009 %J Journal of Computer Assisted Learning %K learning patternlanguagenetwork review web2.0 %N 1 %P 1-5 %T Social software, Web 2.0 and learning: status and implications of an evolving paradigm %U http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121640391/abstract %V 25 %X The rapid and widespread uptake of social software, or what are popularly referred to as Web 2.0 technologies, has occurred very much from under the radar and therefore taken many, if not most of us, by surprise. As Crook and Harrison (2008) points out, the '2.0 ness' in this definition refers to an assumed step change in the evolution of the Web, which has now become more open, personalized, participative and social. Or it has become more powerful and widely accessible for all and for most of the time. The current family of technologies that this term refers to range from tools emphasizing social networking (e.g. Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn) and media sharing (e.g. MySpace, YouTube and Flickr) to virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), which constitute this more social and participative web. These characteristics are realized through various technical features, such as: the ability of all to write to and publish on the Web; being able to exploit the 'long-tail' (Anderson 2004), or network effects, which provides the means to support numerous and yet small or modestly sized communities of interest; and, the employment of feeds and recommendation systems to bring information and media to us along with a community rating of its value. For brevity, I will use the term social software throughout the rest of this editorial. This will also subsume the 'Web 2.0 ness' referred to earlier, as the pressing question addressed by this special issue is: What are the implications for learning? In the UK in particular, in addition to many local initiatives, organizations such as the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) have supported a raft of projects that have aimed to take the popularity, participation and general energy of social software into education, to raise levels of relevance, motivation and engagement. But so far, the findings have been very mixed, with many initiatives suggesting the necessity to both better understand learning and better understand 'the social web'– before proposing solutions that draw the two together. Although an initial examination of the social, communicative and knowledge (or representational) practices that are supported by social software suggest they share a lot of commonality with key learning practices, Ravenscroft et al. (2008) have pointed out that One of the problems with recent educational articulations of social software and Web 2.0 is the misalignment of social practices that are ostensibly oriented towards and motivated by 'interest' with those that are oriented towards and motivated by 'learning'. … Whilst these purposes and the practices they entail are not mutually exclusive, they often involve different processes of meaning making. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433): And they go on to elaborate: In other words, whilst specific practices such as personal content creation and expression, communication, media sharing, multimodal dialogue and social networking are relevant to communities of interest and learning, these will usually be orchestrated differently in both. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433)

@article{Ravenscroft09, abstract = {The rapid and widespread uptake of social software, or what are popularly referred to as Web 2.0 technologies, has occurred very much from under the radar and therefore taken many, if not most of us, by surprise. As Crook and Harrison (2008) points out, the '2.0 ness' in this definition refers to an assumed step change in the evolution of the Web, which has now become more open, personalized, participative and social. Or it has become more powerful and widely accessible for all and for most of the time. The current family of technologies that this term refers to range from tools emphasizing social networking (e.g. Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn) and media sharing (e.g. MySpace, YouTube and Flickr) to virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), which constitute this more social and participative web. These characteristics are realized through various technical features, such as: the ability of all to write to and publish on the Web; being able to exploit the 'long-tail' (Anderson 2004), or network effects, which provides the means to support numerous and yet small or modestly sized communities of interest; and, the employment of feeds and recommendation systems to bring information and media to us along with a community rating of its value. For brevity, I will use the term social software throughout the rest of this editorial. This will also subsume the 'Web 2.0 ness' referred to earlier, as the pressing question addressed by this special issue is: What are the implications for learning? In the UK in particular, in addition to many local initiatives, organizations such as the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) have supported a raft of projects that have aimed to take the popularity, participation and general energy of social software into education, to raise levels of relevance, motivation and engagement. But so far, the findings have been very mixed, with many initiatives suggesting the necessity to both better understand learning and better understand 'the social web'– before proposing solutions that draw the two together. Although an initial examination of the social, communicative and knowledge (or representational) practices that are supported by social software suggest they share a lot of commonality with key learning practices, Ravenscroft et al. (2008) have pointed out that One of the problems with recent educational articulations of social software and Web 2.0 is the misalignment of social practices that are ostensibly oriented towards and motivated by 'interest' with those that are oriented towards and motivated by 'learning'. … Whilst these purposes and the practices they entail are not mutually exclusive, they often involve different processes of meaning making. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433): And they go on to elaborate: In other words, whilst specific practices such as personal content creation and expression, communication, media sharing, multimodal dialogue and social networking are relevant to communities of interest and learning, these will usually be orchestrated differently in both. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433)}, added-at = {2009-01-20T10:31:34.000+0100}, author = {Ravenscroft, A.}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2ccc2f7989cd324437e48e73082995222/yish}, interhash = {cb6ac96f80c61d511060033de6020782}, intrahash = {ccc2f7989cd324437e48e73082995222}, journal = {Journal of Computer Assisted Learning}, keywords = {learning patternlanguagenetwork review web2.0}, note = {doi={10.1111/j.1365-2729.2008.00308.x}}, number = 1, pages = {1-5}, timestamp = {2009-01-20T10:31:34.000+0100}, title = {Social software, Web 2.0 and learning: status and implications of an evolving paradigm}, url = {http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121640391/abstract}, volume = 25, year = 2009 }