Category Archives: Social software

Education platform/s & wikis

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Was sent this by a Queen’s Award winning education software vendor today (thanks Andy). In case it’s of value to others I have reproduced the introduced to this study by Futurelab below on wikis in schools. It’s obviously a growing market:

“Wikis have been heralded as one of a number of new and powerful forms of software capable of supporting a range of collaborative ventures and learning activities. This paper addresses the potential uses of wikis – online editable websites – as learning tools in schools. It places wikis in the context of current relevant literature about collaborative learning, summarising major theories of learning in communities and knowledge-building in networked groups. It also looks briefly at the trends in the wider area of ‘social software’, of which wikis are just one example. Using wikis in school is explored further through a short-term ‘case study’ in a UK secondary school. The literature and research background is used to analyse some of the emerging issues surrounding using wikis in the classroom highlighted through this case study. This paper looks both at the affordances of the technology itself and the wider context of the classroom, and offers some provisional conclusions about the potential of using wikis to support collaborative learning in schools.”

A social approach to using complexity (2)

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Of course my approach to complexity didn’t work ’cause my means fitted my ends. I wasn’t trying to provide a top-down solution but working as one of the team, kind of an ‘insider consultant’ model. Which at one level is obviously counter-cultural for the NHS, despite the fact that the MA (Modernisation Agency) had written a report on harnessing social movement theory to making change happen, the reality of what that means is outside most people’s experience. Kind of like what I recall some social psychologist who been brought in by City Hall in deepest California reporting the cry that went up from the employees on his arrival each morning: “Hey, here comes the Chaos guy!”. And equally to the average manager what I talking about sounds a bit counter-intuitive, what bring someone in with a big idea but then get them to blend in with everyone so that it kind of disappears. But that’s the point, you want people to accept it for themselves, to own it and shape it, using social software. And my contention is that you need an unusual low-level attitude (kind of like putting sync into action) to show how it operates amongst staff not managers to actually make it fly and pay on its ROI. (So you don’t need to write weighty reports, but you do need to sell it in many different ways on a day to day level that connects with how staff connect with their work and their world).

Enough. Got to go and get some fresh air and buy a new washing machine. The old one broke down while I was doing my ironing whilst watching the rock documentary ‘Dig’.