A presentation for Southwestern Community College, Sylva, North Carolina.

1. Open & Collaborative Learning
How Social Networks Can
Transform Education
Dr. Alec Couros
April 2010
Southwestern Community College
Sylva, North Carolina

3. Who is this guy?

4. risk

5. “Web 2.0 tools that might allow academics to
reflect and reimagine what they do as scholars.
Such tools might positively affect -- even
transform - research, teaching, and services
responsibilities - only if scholars choose to
build serious academic lives online, presenting
semi-public selves and becoming invested in and
connected to the work of their peers and
students.” (Greenhow, Robella, & Hughes, 2009)

6. my blog, my hub

7. photo sharing

8. video sharing

9. social networking services

10. content sharing

11. copyleft

12. open cv

13. open teaching

14. changes

17. Free Tools

18. Open Content
“describes any kind of creative work in a
format that explicitly allows copying and
modifying of its information by anyone,
not exclusively by a closed organization,
firm, or individual. (wikipedia)

19. Open Access
“The aim of the open access movement is to make
scientific and scholarly literature openly accessible
to all users free of charge.” (open-access.net)
open access is beginning to expand to conferences,
courses, and other educational events

20. Ubiquity

21. Personal Learning Networks

22. context

25. Each technology
creates a new
environment.
The effects of media
come from their form
not their content.

27. Mario Couros

30. connected reality

31. quick stats (2009)
• 90 trillion emails sent annually from
1.4 billion email users
• 234 million websites
• 1.73 billion Internet users
• 126 millions blogs
• 350 million Facebook users
• 4 billion images on Flickr
• 1 billion Youtube videos served daily.
Stats as of Jan 22/10 via Royal Pingdom

32. Stats as of March 17/10 via Mashable

35. David Wiley
Then vs Now
Analog Digital
Tethered Mobile
Isolated Connected
Generic Personal
Consumption Creating
@opencontent
Closed Open

36. David Wiley
Education vs Everyday
Analog Digital
Tethered Mobile
Isolated Connected
Generic Personal
Consumption Creating
@opencontent
Closed Open

37. danah boyd
Teens are not connecting in
the ways we fear. But, we need
to pay attention to:
•Properties: persistence,
replicability, searchability,
scalability, (de)locatability.
•Dynamics: invisible
audiences, collapsed contexts,
blurring of public & private @zephoria
spaces

38. Michael Wesch
• Inspired by McLuhan’s
“We shape our tools and
thereafter our tools shape
us.”
• Youtube & other social
media mitigate “connection
without constraint”. In
many cases this leaves to
@mwesch “tremendously deep
communities”.

39. practice

40. connecting educators

41. Grade 1 - Expert Visits
@kathycassidy

42. Grade 5 - Choir on Youtube
ps22chorus.blogspot.com

43. Grade 6 - Global Connections
@zbpipe

44. Around the World - 80 Schools
@langwitches

45. Highschool - Youtube Channel
@amhwrites

46. HigherEd - Open Courses
eci831.wikispaces.com

47. Professional Identities

48. PD Gone Wild

49. Real-time search

50. Real-time collaboration

51. Real-time streaming
ps22chorus.blogspot.com

52. Thinning Walls
Private Public
Closed Open

53. designing 4 openness

54. if you build it ...

55. non-credit students

56. social affordance

57. distributed conversations

58. culture of sharing

59. global classroom

60. invisible colleges

61. why this matters?

62. Disruptive media

63. Social Learning

64. New Possibilities

65. Power of Openness

66. Disruptive Education

67. Drive to Connect

68. @willrich45

69. “I was able to go out
and learn throughout
the entire week, the
entire year, and I’m
still learning with
“The best part of the
course is that it’s not
ending. With the
connections we’ve built,
it never has to end.”

70. “The course ... has been the most profound pd
experience I’ve ever had. It forced me to
critique & review my practice. I never knew how
important social networks were. Now, I couldn’t
be a teacher without being connected. It’s
drastically changed my view of education.”

71. this is not going away
social media provides
engagement/motivation
incredible possibilities
for teaching and learning
development of meaningful
learning communities
good teaching is shared & transparent

72. Don’t limit a child to
your own learning, for
he was born in another
time. ~Tagore
web: couros.ca
twitter: courosa
google: couros
couros@gmail.com