Switzerland, Networked Learning and Online Social Networking January 31, 2007

I just returned from a week in Switzerland. I was attending The CSCL Alpine Rendez-Vous 2007. CSCL stands for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and I was part of a workshop that focused on Networked Learners and Networked Learning. In fact, I know very little about networked learning or even learning in general, but there were many interesting researchers attending the workshop who know very much about the subject and that was really exciting. I was to present my PhD project during the workshop and since my subject is online social networking I tried to make the connection between social networking sites and networked learning. My claim was that networked learning could be one way of understanding what is going on at social networking sites. If you take that stand, social networking sites could be viewed as networked learning environments and I find that perspective interesting. Especially, when I think of the amount of informal learning that actually takes place on sites like Arto where young people are willing to e.g. help each other with advanced HTML design, discuss society-oriented problems in the debate forum or “blog their guts out” in pages long blog posts at their profiles. (more…)