OUseful Info

Facebook Platform or VLE - where would YOUR students prefer to be?

I'm not a heavy Facebook user (though I do have more Facebook (and LinkedIn) friends than MySpace friends) but maybe, maybe the Facebook Platform is going to provide stickiness (for me) through the applications I can now use within it?

Finding apps is not as easy as it might be, but here are a couple that have caught my in a "Facebook as semi-formal ad hoc social learning environment".

Why semi-formal? Because the original Facebook model - connecting people who are students at the same institution - can presumably be leveraged to allow sharing within a particular institution. For example:

The Scribd Facebook app is a way to share documents with your friends and your school. Just like Facebook profiles, documents are only visible at the school of the uploader, so you'll need to add the app to see the docs at your school.

...which is what makes it social too.

(And the ad hoc'ery? That comes from users being able to choose which apps they add to their profile... for some of my thoughts from way back when on "ad hoc learning environments", see Integrating Ad Hoc and Formal Communities)

In case you haven't come across it, Scribd is an online document sharing app. One of the things I like about it is the embedded document previewing it offers. In terms of how well it might work as an eportfolio (like the OU's My Stuff), Scribd offers storage, tagging and previewing features.

At the moment, I think Scribd uploads can only be public - which is not so good for a personal portfolio. However, the Box.net online storage application has already got onto the Facebook platform, so that's a place to keep things privately I guess?

On its own site (?!) Box.net offers Zoho integration (discussed in passing here: ePortfolios, Distributed Storage and Personal Repository Caches), so it'll be interesting to see whether editing box documents exposed in your Facebook profile via Zoho will be possible...

I briefly commented in PLE as a Platform? how integrating the Zoho application suite with Facebook would be really something. Zoho is already starting to embed some of its applications in others (I was using Zoho Chat in Zoho Meeting last week - and then spotted that it will be possible to embed Zoho Meetings in a Zoho Presenter slide.

[Added: with integrated tools and document sharing - Web O/S style - as well as the social linkages and permission structures/authentication offered by Facebook, I think the Facebook Platform is definitely worth watching. Institutions may not go for it (are they going for Google or Microsoft hosted solutions, for example?) but their students might. And those students - as graduates - might stick with it after they complete their studies. Many HEIs are trying to bolster charitable donations by developing alumni networks (rather than lifelong learning networks/communities....?) Maybe the students will create their own?]

Social bookmarking can now be embedded in Facebook via ma.gnolia and calendaring using 30 boxes.

And just as I envisioned Stringle-like environments offering embedded, "in-LE" editors, the Facebook Platform offers this approach too: as it does with the Picnik online photo editor, for example.

Now here's your starter for 10: what would a Blackboard or Moodle Facebook application look like? Does it even make sense to ask that question?

Or are environments like Blackboard and Moodle 'platforms' in their own right? Albeit not ones you would ever choose to spend your time in?!;-)

Posted by ajh59 at May 26, 2007 10:00 PM