Social+Sharing+-+Wednesday

- Sophia Jung: 10698266 - Mia Roditis: 10692174 - Julie Tran: 10736953
 * __Group Trio Members__**:

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According to Brown & Adler (2008) Social learning is based on the concept that our understandings of content is socially constructed through conversations and grounded interaction. Italki is a free social networking site that aims to assist learners all over the world how to learn a new lanugage or further develop the level of the language they are currently speaking. ** The mission statement on the Italki website accentuates their goal of helping users to obtain new skills, ‘Italki helps people learn foreign languages…it intends to become the leading platform for online language …’ (Italki inc. 2009) Through this, Italki offers to provide users with the best features possible in order for them to acquire new knowledge while having an interactive time. Italki incorporates characterisitcs of many other social networking sites such as facebook and myspace through features such as instant messaging, video calls and e-mails so that uers can communicate at a more causal level. However italki allows users to enhance their language capabilities through a mix of casual and professional teaching methods. Features such as ‘Language partners’ allows users to search for which language they wish to learn by a specific type of person while language teachers allows you to search for a teacher that will professionally help you learn a language. Italki aims to provide the best for its users hence they have upgraded many of their features such as incorporating video features, sound and pictures.This social networking site provides a platform for sharing new and old information and it provides users with an opportunity to learn about other cultures and traditions. With over 400,000 registered members, Italki is a growing social networking site that is easy to access and effective in delivering a new learning experience. It offers many benefits for users such as being able to find new people to interact with, it uses social solutions to solve problems such as harnessing the community to answer language questions and most importantly it provides overall new skills for learners. Challenges that may occur however include languages being taught incorrectly due to the immense amount of users registered for this website.To prevent this from occuring users are encouraged to use a wide range og resources when learning a new language. ‘Flickr’ is a social sharing website in which users can upload, store and share photographs and videos online. Photographs and videos can be organised accordingly by their submitters through an online tagging system, in which related keywords can be tagged to the item. One popular educational application of ‘Flickr’ is that it serves as a learning resource, allowing students to practice for oral exams, specifically for many of the exams from the Cambridge First Certificate, CAE and Proficiency exams. In these specific exams, students are asked to describe similar photographs, as well as point out the differences between two separate photographs through an interlocutor led discussion (Beare, 2004). In this learning context the learner is engaged in an independent-learning environment where the learner trains themselves through individually selecting photographs on ‘Flickr’ as a means for practicing their skills for the exam. In this learning context, students can also share their photos globally online with other students who are also undertaking similar oral exams in order to broaden their resources. ‘Flickr’ is beneficial in this learning context since its tagging system for photographs will allow these students to quickly locate and access images related to particular topics and subjects with ease. As well as this, ‘Flickr’ provides both private and public settings for its users meaning privacy controls can be set to determine who can view the image. This guarantees safe photo sharing across the web globally for all students who are sharing resources on the interface. A major disadvantage for these students however, is that some photographs may have tags that are misleading or are inappropriately tagged, costing them time consumption and causing confusion. Overall, ‘Flickr’ has served to be a very popular revising resource for students who are studying for oral exams included in the Cambridge First Certificate, CAE and Proficiency exams. Its quick access to photographs and videos online, as well as its quick and simple uploading nature, makes it highly convenient for students studying for oral exams globally. The only recommendation for ‘Flickr’ in this learning context is that it should develop a better improved tagging system in order to prevent loss photographs on the interface.

Experience Project is a social sharing site. When greater use of the social networking and sharing environment grew, the key benefit identified to users was not the editorialized content, but the relationships that formed between people who understood each other through the shared experiences. Experience Project is a beneficial site that allows for interaction, communication and learning pre, during and post peoples exploration. This sight is up to date, current and utilizes the latest software and technology. Experience Project involves ‘software that supports group interaction” (Shirky 2003). The technology is utilised as a community where users connect through their life experiences. In the education sector, newer applications such as weblogs, wikis and social bookmarking have seen a recent increase in popularity and growing mainstream interest. At the same time, there are other technologies which enrich and enhance these practices, like syndication systems that bring information in a well organised way from one source to another (Owen 2006). The learners are welcomed into a community for sharing in an education based context. Experience Project is a beneficial site that allows for interaction, communication and learning pre, during and post peoples exploration. This sight is up to date, current, utilizes the latest software and technology. Experience Project involves ‘software that supports group interaction” (Shirky 2003). There are various benefits of Experience Project, It delivers communication between groups. There are implicit mechanisms that allow interest groups to electronically coalesce, to be aware of what each other are doing and to review each others’ actions and to allow those actions to benefit each other member of a community. It provides a means of gathering and making material available. The site delivers collaborative collecting and indexing of information. It also has new tools for knowledge aggregation and creation of new knowledge. There are also however disadvantages of the site. Users may find the site difficult to navigate as it may seem cluttered.

REFERENCES: 
 * Aune, P. Sean.( 2008). Italki Launches Socially Built Language Textbooks, Viewed 23 march 2009. [|http://mashable.com/2008/0 5/06/italki-language-textb ooks/]
 * Beare, K. 2004, //Flickr for English Language Classes,// About.com, viewed 20 April, 2009, < [] >


 * Berardi, S. 2008, // How Flickr can make you a better photographer //, Digital Photo Help, viewed 18 March 2009, <[]>

> [|http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/MindsonFireOpenEducationt/45823?time=123788] > [|Berjikly (2004) / Experience Project / Viewed 22 March 2009]
 * Brown, J. Adler, R (2008) //‘Minds on Fire: Open Education, the long tail and learning 2.0//’ Future Lab, Creative Commons Attribution, 14 March 2009

    
 * Digizen, 2007, // What are social netwroking services?, // Digizen, viewed 18 March 2009, <[]>
 *    Italki. ( 2008) Classroom without walls, viewed 23 march 2009. [|http://acohen843.wordpress .com/2008/05/31/italki]
 *    <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Italki Inc. 2009. About Italki.com. viewed 23 march 2009  [| http://www.italki.com/stat ic/about.htm]
 * <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Kevin, (2009) Beta release of language teachers: Pay for lessons or earn money teaching!, viewed 25 march 2009 [| http://blog.italki.com/]
 * Of Zen and Computing 2006, // How to share your photos online //, Of Zen and Computing, viewed 18 March 2009, <[]>

> [|https://online.uts.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1rl=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_7245_1%26url%3d]
 * Owen, M. Grant, L. Sayers, S. Facer, K. (2006) ‘Social Software and Learning’ in Open Education, Future Lab, Uniting Kingdom, 14 March 2009

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 * <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Smith, Fran. (2007) ‘How To: Use Social-Networking Technology for Learning’, viewed 23 march 2009 [|http://www.edutopia.org/ho w-use-social-networking-te chnology]
 * <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Toffler. ( 2009) Chatfest- Shanghai: Connecting users (and the team!), viewed 26 march 2009 []


 * Wikipedia 2001, // Flickr 2004 //, Wikipedia, viewed 18 March 2009, <[]>

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> <span style="font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Tahoma','sans-serif';">Wikipedia (2009) Italki, Wikipedia, United States, viewed 26 March 2009 []