Enhancing learning beyond the classroom: blogging and other social networking tools

Blogging has become one of the key ingredients of the so-called socials networks. This phenomenon has indeed invaded the world of education. Connections between people, comments on each other posts, and assessment of innovation are usually interesting characteristics of blogs related to students and scholars. Blogs have become a kind of new form of authority, bringing about (divergent) discussions which lead to creation of knowledge. The use of blogs as an innovative, educational tool is not at all new. However, their use in universities is not very widespread yet. Blogging for personal affairs is rather commonplace, but blogging for professional affairs – teaching, research and service, is scarce, despite the availability of ready-to-use, free tools. Unfortunately, Information Society has not reached yet enough some universities: not only are (student) blogs scarcely used as an educational tool, but it is quite rare to find a blog written by University professors. The Institute of Computational Chemistry of the University of Girona and the Department of Chemistry of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has joined forces to create “InnoCiència”, a new Group on Digital Science Communitation. This group, formed by ca. ten researchers, has promoted the use of blogs, twitters. wikis and other tools of Web 2.0 in activities in Catalonia concerning the dissemination of Science, like Science Week, Open Day or Researchers’ Night. Likewise, its members promote use of social networking tools in chemistry- and communication-related courses. This communication explains the outcome of social-network experiences with teaching undergraduate students and organizing research communication events. We provide live, hands-on examples and interactive ground to show how blogs and twitters can be used to enhance the yield of teaching and research. Impact of blogging and other social networking tools on the outcome of the learning process is very depending on the target audience and the environmental conditions. A few examples are provided and some proposals to use these techniques efficiently to help students are hinted

Social Networking Sites as Technology Enhanced Learning Communities towards autonomous language learning

The following contribution pretends to cope with the demands of a globalised, post-modern environment through the design and implementation of an online international project where an SNS is used in order to join English as Second Language (ESL) students from different parts of the world. The design of the project appears around the implementation of the Bologna process in the Faculty of Education from the University of Girona where the basic prerequisite of all students to acquire English at the level B1 of the Common European Portfolio makes English a compulsory competence for communication among its higher education candidates in order to develop in the world. Together with the University of Girona, there is the International Educational and Resources Network (iEARN) which promotes the participation of schools around the world in online international projects

Social network measures for "nosduocentered" networks, their predictive power on performance

Our purpose in this article is to define a network structure which is based on two egos instead of the egocentered (one ego) or the complete network (n egos). We describe the characteristics and properties for this kind of network which we call “nosduocentered network”, comparing it with complete and egocentered networks. The key point for this kind of network is that relations exist between the two main egos and all alters, but relations among others are not observed. After that, we use new social network measures adapted to the nosduocentered network, some of which are based on measures for complete networks such as degree, betweenness, closeness centrality or density, while some others are tailormade for nosduocentered networks. We specify three regression models to predict research performance of PhD students based on these social network measures for different networks such as advice, collaboration, emotional support and trust. Data used are from Slovenian PhD students and their s

El plan de lengua y cohesión social en Catañunya: primeros datos de una investigación = Language and Social Cohesion Plan in Catalonia: Initial research data

Los programas de inmersión lingüística han constituido y constituyen dentro del Sistema Educativo catalán la principal forma para que el alumnado de lengua familiar no-catalana aprenda una nueva lengua, el catalán, sin que, en su proceso de aprendizaje, vea mermado ni el desarrollo de su propia lengua ni su rendimiento académico. El éxito de la inmersión lingüística en las décadas anteriores ha sido frecuentemente utilizado como uno de los argumentos orientativos para justificar la política lingüística que se sigue en la escolarización de la infancia extranjera. Sin embargo, los resultados obtenidos por investigaciones recientes parece que no avalan empíricamente dicho argumento. Este artículo analiza dichos resultados y expone, a partir del Plan para la Lengua y Cohesión Social puesto en marcha por el Departamento de Educación de la Generalitat de Cataluña, cuáles son los retos que se presentan a su Sistema Educativo dentro del nuevo marco que supone el aumento de la diversidad cultural y lingüística en la actual sociedad catalana

Embedding Emotional Context in Recommender Systems

Emotions are crucial for user's decision making in recommendation processes. We first introduce ambient recommender systems, which arise from the analysis of new trends on the exploitation of the emotional context in the next generation of recommender systems. We then explain some results of these new trends in real-world applications through the smart prediction assistant (SPA) platform in an intelligent learning guide with more than three million users. While most approaches to recommending have focused on algorithm performance. SPA makes recommendations to users on the basis of emotional information acquired in an incremental way. This article provides a cross-disciplinary perspective to achieve this goal in such recommender systems through a SPA platform. The methodology applied in SPA is the result of a bunch of technology transfer projects for large real-world rccommender systems

Didactics–promoting collaborative work and personal learning environment. Critical, creative and autonomous roles in a competitive society

School has evolved from a place where knowledge is provided to a place where learners are helped to develop their professional and social skills. Consequently, education must evolve through big challenges in order to face the changes of society in the XXIst century

Efficiency and Equity in Learning Communities and schools

Traditionally, school efficiency has been measured as a function of educational production. In the last two decades, however, studies in the economics of education have indicated that more is required to improve school efficiency: researchers must explore how significant changes in school organization affect the performance of at-risk students. In this paper we introduce Henry Levin’s adoption of the X-efficiency approach to education and we describe the efficient and cost-effective characteristics of one Learning Communities Project School that significantly improved its student outcomes and enrollment numbers and reduced its absenteeism rate to zero. The organizational change that facilitated these improvements defined specific issues to address. Students’ school success became the focus of the school project, which also offered specific incentives, selected teachers, involved parents and community members in decisions, and used the most efficient technologies and methods. This case analysis reveals new two elements—family training and community involvement—that were not explicit parts of Levin’s adaptation. The case of the Antonio Machado Public School should attract the attention of both social scientists and policy makers

Socio-Cultural Transformation and the Promotion of Learning

The main premise of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory is that to promote learning, and thus development, educators must intervene in, and change, the students’ socio-cultural context. Vygotsky’s theory, however, has been misinterpreted and the opposite approach has been accepted: the teaching is adapted, according to the context. The result is widespread failure in schools. This article reclaims the true transformative meaning of Vygotskian theory and shows how successful schools in several countries implement various actions to transform their social and cultural environment. Data is presented from six case studies of successful schools conducted in five European countries. The analysis shows that these actions improve instrumental learning and, consequently, cognitive development. All these efforts focus on teaching methods that aim to increase the amount that students learn

Viure l'educació social des de dins. Un practicum on tot ressona

Creure en els estudiants és confiar amb les seves possibilitats i des d'aquesta premissa qualsevol espurna d'oportunitat de fer, reflexionar o viure és benvinguda. El practicum d'educació social està dissenyat per a que els estudiants puguin escollir que volen aprendre i com ho volen aprendre, els tutors passem a ser acompanyants d'aprenentatge. Metafòricament els estudiants trien quina obra volen interpretar i els tutors el que facilitem són els escenaris per poder dur a terme l'obra. En aquesta comunicació volem compartir amb la seva veu l'experiència de viure i aprendre a partir de l'obra i la vivència amb un educador social significatiu: Tim Guénard

El Currículo y la vinculación social y productiva. Proyectos de vinculación con créditos

Esta comunicación es producto de una investigación. Los proyectos son autogestionados por estudiantes en proyecto, asignaturas, docentes y lugar. La ingeniería representa el 45% de los proyectos. La formación gestionada por la escuela prevalece, solo el 16% de los estudiantes en el campo de la ingeniería se encuentran auto gestionando su aprendizaje en esta modalidad y un 6% en la totalidad de la UABC. Se observa un avance discreto pero alentador a prácticas autogestivas del estudiante

Nuevos recursos y estrategias en el aprendizaje por competencias en introducción a la antropología social

Presentamos nuestra propuesta de materiales adaptados al aprendizaje-evaluación por competencias en la materia básica de Ciencias Sociales 'Introducción a la Antropología Social y Cultural' en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid. La experiencia incorpora el desarrollo de herramientas para la integración de la evaluación en el proceso de aprendizaje (diseño de actividades y estrategias de evaluación -coevaluación, evaluación por pares, autoevaluación-) así como actividades formativas externas al aula, tanto en los cursos como en el marco del Plan de Acción Tutorial (trabajos de campo, excursiones didácticas, concurso de pósteres científicos, ciclos de conferencias)