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Professional Learning Centre - New Social Networking Courses?

By Connie

Hi folks! I regret not having more energy to blog these past several days. One distraction has been my course at the Professional Learning Centre at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto -- Social Networking Tools: Hands on Learning It has been quite popular, to the point where I haven't even really had to promote it here on the blog.

The idea for the course came from Rebecca Jones who I ran into back in the spring en route to the Computers in Libraries conference. She envisioned a course wherein we play with a number of the "Web 2.0" tools in the morning, and then discuss the implications in the afternoon. You never know when opportunity will knock, my friends!

I took the ball and ran with it, creating a fun but intense survey course in which we set up a blog, wiki, feed aggregator account and social bookmarking account. We discuss uses of each and obstacles people would face in setting these up for use at their organizations. I also give a tour of some of the other tools including MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, LibraryThing and Second Life (I throw in some other tools depending upon the interests of the group).

We have run this class about 7 or 8 times since August, including a few times in Ottawa. I am just in the process of planning some additional dates for the spring. Thanks so much to everyone who has attended, for your enthusiasm, thoughfulness, and participation. Every class has been completely different, with a different mix of participant backgrounds and interests. You have kept me on my toes!!

The question is, where do we go from here? Eva Kupidura who coordinates the program has challenged me to add more courses to the roster. But what? Advanced questions in the class seem to centre around RSS feeds as well as wikis. Possibly a full course just on wikis would be a great next step. But what would be the issues we cover?

Please--what additional courses would you like to see me develop? What topics should they include? Would a full day in-person format work again, or something else?

Leave a comment here, or email me directly at conniecrosby at gmail.com . Thanks for your help!

Connie

Full post as published by Connie Crosby on December 06, 2007 (boomark / email).