Topyx

Topyx is a software tool that allows companies to create dedicated online communities for their employees. It works especially well when a company has employees spread across a wide area. Letting you customize your experience to your corporate branding. Also allowing you to extend the discussion and learning not only to your employees but to your customers as well to keep them in the loop on whatever project you may be working on at the time.

http://interactyx.com/

Saba

Saba is a company that makes a suite of software for social learning in the workplace and in education. One of their products is called Learning@work. It is a program that allows companies to implement their software and creates a discussion board type of environment that lets employees experts and students all talk and discuss a topic so they can all learn from each other. Another product they offer called Performance@work is software that constantly gives feedback to employees to tell them about how they are performing giving them social rewards and recognition among their coworkers. These are just two of the products Saba offers.

http://www.saba.com/

Social Networking for what you like

One thing that needs to be addressed in class is how broad social learning can be. All we ever talk about are Facebook, Twitter, or linked-in. The truth is the internet is much larger than this and we need to talk about that. There are sites for every intrest known from Reddit that does topics like memes all the way to Ravelry that is a site for knitting and crocheting. Ravelry is just one example of another community on the internet  that you just dont think about everyday. Proving that social learning reaches everyone whether they know it or not.

Social Learning in business

I have really been focusing a lot lately on the benefits and negatives to social learning in the school and university platform. One section I haven't focused on yet is social learning in business settings. Business do this just as much as everyone else. Companies like Google like to create intranets in their headquarters that connect all employees from all sections on the company so they can collaborate and share ideas with each other. This is very positive because it can give different perspectives from all different people to get to the best possible solution. This system Google put in place is one of those things that you never knew you needed until you saw Google created it. Now however it is one of those things you could never live without.

Negative side of social learning

Social learning is not all rainbows and buttercups there are downsides to everything. In social learning they really focus on group learning and bringing students together to work with one another. There can be downsides to this. As all people know often times when students work in groups one student might take charge and do a lot of the work leaving another student doing almost nothing. That student gets no benefits from this style of learning and could jeopardize his or her future of learning. That student would benefit more from a one on one style of learning so they can make sure they are on the same level as everyone else and can go as slowly as they need to grasp all concepts.

More benefits to learning in groups

As I have been blogging about learning in groups socially is a very helpful in many ways. One way I haven't talked about though is how it helps improve students group skills. When learning socially you get the chance to work with tons of other people from a broad range of backgrounds. Learning from them and them learning from you. Getting your hands dirty in my eyes is really the best way to get the most out of what you are trying to learn rather then just having your head shoved in a book.

Combine Them

The past few blog posts I have made are about the different types of programs that have been surfacing on the market lately and how they integrate into social media. The next step I see coming in the process is combining the online learning we have now with these programs. I think in the very near future we are going to see online classes that are on blackboard or other sites combined with the programs like rabbit that will let classes very simply and cleanly collaborate online as if they were all in the same room together. Let people video chat with other students not just with the teacher. Break out into virtual groups and work on projects together. I think we will see this maybe in the next year or two.

Study Pod

I found this interesting program that is sort of like the rabbit program I shared with the class. What it does it where rabbit is more of a social hangout type of program StudyPod is a more class oriented program. It lets you create study groups, share files, make events to name a few things I think something like this is going to be on the forefront of technology in college in a few years just because I already see it happening with so much communication through technologies like blackboard. Below I provided a link to StudyPod's website.

https://www.studypods.com/

Social Learning

Social Learning can be a really good tool for people that are both introverted and extroverted. It allows both to shine in a way. People who are introverted and don't like to get up in front of class can sit back and listen how they like to in the first place letting them be part of the group and be comfortable at the same time. It also allows extroverts to do what they like, being social butterfly's. They can talk to the class or to groups, learn and help other people in the class. So social learning doesn't have to be necessarily on the internet. It can be in class as well. To be honest everything these days are moving online and I think we need more in person classes. More and more people are becoming social awkward and more that just shy.

Make my own time

I watch a lot of ted talks in fact I had seen the Jane McGonigal ted talk before we ever saw it in class. Its really interesting to see the ideas these speakers have to solve the world biggest problems. Jane McGonigal showed us different activities we could do to increase our life span. My favorite was this woman, she came up with this game that was almost like world of war craft. It brought people together to do missions that are real world problems like ending famine or finding a renewable energy but they were cleverly disguised so the gamer didn't know that they were solving these problems making it more enjoyable. There are tons of ted talks just like these out there and there all just as interesting.

Social Media

There are tons of social media applications emerging lately. A lot of them strictly on the mobile platforms. Its really interesting to see all the different formats they've been making lately. Formats that have been moving away from the traditional facebook / linkedin format. For example there's a new app called tinder that everyone's been talking about. It is a dating social media app that allows you to anonymously like or dislike someone then if the person you liked likes you back it will start a chat between you. This is a fun new format for social media that I haven't seen before and i'm hoping more people are creative and come out with creative formats like this.

Change of Plans

As most projects go as you dive deeper into a project you see what will work and what wont work. We found that the better bet for us to get the 10 hours fulfilled would be by changing our project to focus on Linux terminal. Currently we are exploring the different ways to teach Linux and the benefits to using a Linux operating system over other systems. The system we plan to teach on is Ubuntu and we will go from installing the system to basics uses and then if we have time move into advanced uses of Ubuntu and the Linux terminal.

Learning Module Project: Update 1

So we've gotten the most critical step done in our project, picking our topic. We decided on University of Reddit. It is a free website on Reddit that lets people teach whomever is interested about anything. Its actually pretty interesting to see all the different topics that are available to people. They expand into everything from science to history to music and everything under the rainbow. Its a good way for people to get solid knowledge for free its just to bad that the world only cares about degrees from schools that you pay for. Regardless I think it is going to make a pretty good project.

Learning Module Project

So this week we started a project for the semester. We have to design an online learning module. This is going to be interesting, last semester we had to teach a computer seminar for the first level of the class. Now though changing it to online is going to be a challenge to format it in such a way that it is useful and easy to understand to whomever wants to use our module. I guess we'll see how it turns out in a few months.

Working Together

In class this week the topic has been brainstorming. As individuals and as groups, we worked on the best possible ways to come up with the best ideas. Although not the first time we've done these types of activities it does transfer over to over classes. Many of my other classes this semester are group project oriented and we use these approaches everyday in class. So although an old sometimes forgotten skill it is still a useful one.

Career Fair Time

Today the business and technology career fair was held at the Columbia Convention Center. There was tons of fun and interesting employers like intel, BMW, and a particularly interesting one called cube. They are a company that does 3d printing and they had a bunch of models on the display. Ive read about the 3d printers before on the internet but this was the first time I've seen them in person. Overall a good career fair!

The Modern iClicker

In class 544 today we did something fun I've never done in any of my other classes. Something that id like to see implemented into all of my classes. It's like a modern iclicker, my teacher used to this site that let her create polls and let us text in our answers to the site. It anonymously created a live view of peoples interests and answers to the polls created. It was nice because it let you send in an answer in many different ways. From your computer, your phone, even twitter and for once it worked unlike many other technologies like it. It was fun and it kept everyone in the class participating in the conversation and I think if more teachers did something like this they would get the students to gather more information.

Entry One - Me!

My name is Mike Armstrong currently I am a Junior at the University of South Carolina. I major in Integrated Information Technology and plan to graduate in the spring of 2014.

I created this blog as part of an assignment for one of my college courses. Throughout the semester I will be posting entries of things I find interesting that are related to the material in my course.

My college career had been pretty typical for about the first year and a half. Going to class, hanging out with friends...you know college things. Then in the spring of last year I was bored and my parents told me I should look into study abroad. Luckily for me if they hadn't said it when they did  I wouldn't have been able to fit it into my course load. Living in Rome, Italy was the best six months of my life. Up's and down's traveling with friends getting stuck in foreign countries I couldn't have asked for a better experience. After this life changing period I gained a second love. First had always been technology, its the reason I got into information technology in the first place. Second is traveling after that time I got the travel bug and its all I want to do now. Which has pushed me into the direction I am now; Back at the University of South Carolina working on finishing my degree I was able to attain in Internship that combines my two loves in life! This summer I will be interning with State Department working at the Consulate of Naples in Italy.

Well thats just a little bit about me for now. There will be more in the next few weeks and months as the semester progresses.