Gruber, M. R. (2011). Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training. Research Report for Share.TEC Pilot. Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open Universiteit in the Netherlands.This report describes and analyses the Share.TEC pilot „Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training”. In the pilot we focused on the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training. It resulted in a wiki that can get used as an educational resource for teaching and learning. The wiki provides a platform for the community of practice for exploring and analysing social web for educational purposes, and is open to educational researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, the wiki has been added to ShareTECʼs open educational resources repository.Share.TE

Gruber, Marion

English

This report describes and analyses the Share.TEC pilot „Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training”. In the pilot we focused on the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training. It resulted in a wiki that can get used as an educational resource for teaching and learning. The wiki provides a platform for the community of practice for exploring and analysing social web for educational purposes, and is open to educational researchers and practitioners. Furthermore, the wiki has been added to ShareTECʼs open educational resources repository

Open University of the Netherlands Research Portal

Open Universiteit www.ou.nl Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education andTeacher TrainingCitation for published version (APA):Gruber, M. (2011). Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training.Document status and date:Published: 31/08/2011Document Version:Peer reviewed versionPlease check the document version of this publication:• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences betweenthe submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for thefinal version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.Link to publicationGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal.If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license above, pleasefollow below link for the End User Agreement:https://www.ou.nl/taverne-agreementTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at:pure-support@ou.nlproviding details and we will investigate your claim.Downloaded from https://research.ou.nl/ on date: 08 Sep. 2023 1 Final Report for Share.TEC Pilot   Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training From June 2010 to April 2011 Marion R. Gruber, Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL)   1. Introduction In this pilot we analysed the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training. It resulted in a wiki that can get used as an educational resource for teacher education and training. The wiki is open to educational researchers and practitioners and it has been added to ShareTECʼs open educational resources repository. The Horizon Report 20101 stated, a “new educational perspective, focused on collective knowledge and the sharing and reuse of learning and scholarly content, has been gaining ground across” (p. 13). “Open content has now come to the point that it is rapidly driving change in both the materials we use and the process of education. At its core, the notion of open content is to take advantage of the Internet as a global dissemination platform for collective knowledge and wisdom, and to design learning experiences that maximize the use of it.“ (Horizon Report 2010, p. 13) Related to this notion on open content and social software it is required to link this innovation potential to practice. This is best explored and analysed by using the tools under real educational conditions. Consequently, this pilot focused on connecting teacher trainers and educational practitioners for sharing experiences of using social software in teacher education and teacher training. The pilot had the following objectives for the participants. 1. Learn about available web tools and services that are useful for teacher students during their studies, teachers in practice, and teacher educators and trainers.  2. Develop practical experiences for using selected tools and services in educational scenarios.  3. Identify the opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use. 4. Share tools, experiences, and findings on the wiki. Based on these objectives good practices for educational applications of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training were discussed and identified. Helpful information is covered at the pilot wiki (see figure 1). This information includes e.g. definitions, literature references, video tutorials, and links to useful online resources.                                                  1 Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010). The 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.  2  Figure 1: Screenshot of SOWEBEDU wiki.  2. Method Realisation The pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Trainingʼ (SOWEBEDU) was set up at the end of June 2010 from OUNL. After the summer break a wiki was established at Wikispaces (see figure 1).2 Additional, a weblog at WordPress was created and linked to the wiki.3  The following activities framed the wiki and the weblog: • Networking (related to objective 1 and 3): Networking activities took place at Online Educa Berlin (Share.TEC booth) in December 2010 as well as in the pilot presentations and workshops. • Collaboration with the E-Learning Coordination of the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) (related to objective 1, 2 and 3): This collaboration focused on the support of networking events and hands-on workshops that encouraged the faculty to participate in the pilot. • Presentations (related to objective 1 and 3): Presentations about social web in education were held at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) and at the Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven (NL). In these presentations an overview of available web tools and services that are useful for teaching and learning were given. Application scenarios in education were identified, and opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use were discussed.                                                 2 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) wiki. http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/  3 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) weblog. http://sowebedu.wordpress.com/   3 • Hands-on workshops (related to objective 1 and 2): At the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) hands-on workshops to Blogging, Collaborative Writing (Wiki), and Microblogging (Twitter) for teachers, teacher trainers, and faculty members were conducted. Workshops to Social Networking (Facebook), Social Bookmarking, and Collaborative Idea Development (Mindmeister) are planned for May and June. In autumn semester hands-on workshop for File Sharing and Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and a second round of held workshops will be offered. • Knowledge exchange (related to objective 1 and 3): The pilot participants shared experiences and ideas about the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services as well as they identified and described application scenarios in education. Opportunities, limitations, and challenges were also identified and discussed. The key outcomes and the application scenarios in education are mentioned at the wiki. During this pilot different communication channels were used: - Social Web: Twitter (#sharetec, #sowebedu), Facebook, weblogs. - Online portals: TELeurope4, Share.TEC5, SWITCH6/eduhub.ch7. - E-mail/mailing lists: teacher education institutions, teacher educators and trainers, and teacher organizations e.g. in AT, CH, and NL. - Face-to-face networking. Target group The pilot targeted teacher students during their studies, teachers in practice, as well as teacher educators and trainers. The participants of the pilot were primarily recruited at networking events, presentations, and hands-on workshops. Evaluation The evaluation of the pilot focused on the following aspects: 1. Analysis of the usage of the topic-based wiki pages using wikispaces analytics. 2. Educational scenarios in relation to the topics. 3. Qualitative analysis of the topics mentioned in the wiki.                                                  4 TELeurope is the social media hub for everything about technology-enhanced learning. It is the community platform of the European open network of excellence in technology-enhanced learning STELLARNET.EU. http://www.teleurope.eu/ 5 http://portal.share-tec.eu/ 6 SWITCH (serving swiss univeristies) provides innovative, unique internet services for the Swiss universities and internet users. http://www.switch.ch/  7 eduhub is a platform for new learning technologies at Swiss universities. Its aim is to implement sustainable IT-based methods in academic teaching, to exchange experiences and to promote collaboration. http://www.eduhub.ch/   4 3. Results The SOWEBEDU8 wiki has 23 members, of which the majority contributed to the resources. The wiki covers eight main topics and one project description (Pinocchio2.0). Every topic provides rich information, such as definitions, tools and services, video tutorials, slides, descriptions of application scenarios as well as references to literature, studies, or websites. Wiki Topics The eight topics of the pilot focused on:  - Social Bookmarking,  - Collaborative Writing,  - Social Networking,  - Blogging (incl. Microblogging),  - File Sharing,  - Collaborative Idea Development,  - Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management, and  - Collaborative Analysis. All topics were described explicitly and enriched with references, tutorials and further information. Educational Scenarios For six topics application scenarios were developed: Social Bookmarking, Collaborative Writing, Social Networking, Blogging (incl. Microblogging), File Sharing, and Collaborative Idea Development. The topics Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and Collaborative Analysis were added at the end of the pilot. Therefore, no scenarios were formulated. All application scenarios in education are described elaborately in the related topic section at the wiki. Wiki Statistics The SOWEBEDU wiki activities started at the end of September 2010. The usage statistic shows a continuous growth of wiki page-views (see figure 2). More than 3000 page-views on the wiki were counted by the end of April 2011. Visitors come from all over the world. The prime origins of the visitors were in alphabetical order: Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, and United States. From September 2010 until the end of that year9 Microblogging (372), Collaborative Writing (363), Blogging (261), Social Bookmarking (218), Wiki (160), Social Networking (126), and Collaborate Idea Development (122) were most interesting to the visitors. From January to the end of April 2011 the following topics were visited mostly: Wiki (346), Collaborative Idea Development (328), Social Web (310), File Sharing (286), Collaborative Writing (226), Blogging (222) and Social Bookmarking (208).                                                 8 Short form of SOcial WEB in EDUcation. 9 http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/space/stats/page/2010   5       Figure 2: Monthly access statistics of the SOWEBEDU wiki from 10/2010 to 4/2011 with the wikispaces statistics.  4. Conclusions This report analysed the Share.TEC pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Trainingʼ (SOWEBEDU). The pilot facilitated a wiki and a weblog on the topic. With these facilities it brought together people who are interested in using social web for teaching and learning and engaged them in sharing their practical experiences. The Wiki provides a platform for this community of practice for exploring and analysing social web for educational purposes.  The key results of the pilot are summarised by the following points: • A Network of teacher educators and teacher trainers, teachers in service and teacher students that are interested in using the social web for teaching and learning. • SOWEBEDU wiki: The wiki provides a platform for a community of practice for exploring and analysing the usage of social web in teaching and learning under real education conditions. It collects resources, fosters the discussions of related issues, supports sharing of information, describes application scenarios in education, and includes all results of this pilot.  6 Furthermore, the wiki was uploaded into the Share.TEC portal as an open educational resource.  • SOWEBEDU weblog: Additional to the wiki a weblog is provided. This blog covers news and information about the topics, pilot related issues and on going activities. • Cooperation with the E-Learning Coordination (ELK) at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, CH:  Together with the ELK team a presentation and hands-on workshops were planned and conducted at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, CH (UZH). • Workshop at Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven, NL. April, 21, 2011, Miniconference "Het gebruik van digitale collecties leermaterialen".  5. Further activities The pilot has been successfully installed a small community that will continue to work with the provided platform. Beyond the scope of this pilot are the following actions that have been already initiated. • Webinar in cooperation with Switch, CH about Social Web for Teaching and Learning. • Additional workshops at the Faculty of Arts, UZH. • Contributions and further development of the wiki.  6. Contact Marion R. Gruber, CELSTEC, Open Universiteit Nederland, NL (marion.gruber[at]ou.nl).   

Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training

DSpace at Open Universiteit Nederland

 1 
Final Report for Share.TEC Pilot  
 
Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and 
Teacher Training 
From June 2010 to April 2011 
Marion R. Gruber, Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) 
 
 
1. Introduction 
In this pilot we analysed the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher 
education and teacher training. It resulted in a wiki that can get used as an educational 
resource for teacher education and training. The wiki is open to educational researchers and 
practitioners and it has been added to ShareTECʼs open educational resources repository. 
The Horizon Report 20101 stated, a “new educational perspective, focused on collective 
knowledge and the sharing and reuse of learning and scholarly content, has been gaining 
ground across” (p. 13). “Open content has now come to the point that it is rapidly driving 
change in both the materials we use and the process of education. At its core, the notion of 
open content is to take advantage of the Internet as a global dissemination platform for 
collective knowledge and wisdom, and to design learning experiences that maximize the use 
of it.“ (Horizon Report 2010, p. 13) Related to this notion on open content and social software 
it is required to link this innovation potential to practice. This is best explored and analysed 
by using the tools under real educational conditions. Consequently, this pilot focused on 
connecting teacher trainers and educational practitioners for sharing experiences of using 
social software in teacher education and teacher training. 
The pilot had the following objectives for the participants. 
1. Learn about available web tools and services that are useful for teacher students during 
their studies, teachers in practice, and teacher educators and trainers.  
2. Develop practical experiences for using selected tools and services in educational 
scenarios.  
3. Identify the opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use. 
4. Share tools, experiences, and findings on the wiki. 
Based on these objectives good practices for educational applications of social software and 
web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training were discussed and 
identified. Helpful information is covered at the pilot wiki (see figure 1). This information 
includes e.g. definitions, literature references, video tutorials, and links to useful online 
resources. 
 
                                                
1 Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010). The 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media 
Consortium. 
 2 
 
Figure 1: Screenshot of SOWEBEDU wiki. 
 
2. Method 
Realisation 
The pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Trainingʼ 
(SOWEBEDU) was set up at the end of June 2010 from OUNL. After the summer break a 
wiki was established at Wikispaces (see figure 1).2 Additional, a weblog at WordPress was 
created and linked to the wiki.3  
The following activities framed the wiki and the weblog: 
• Networking (related to objective 1 and 3): 
Networking activities took place at Online Educa Berlin (Share.TEC booth) in December 
2010 as well as in the pilot presentations and workshops. 
• Collaboration with the E-Learning Coordination of the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich 
(CH) (related to objective 1, 2 and 3): 
This collaboration focused on the support of networking events and hands-on workshops 
that encouraged the faculty to participate in the pilot. 
• Presentations (related to objective 1 and 3): 
Presentations about social web in education were held at the Faculty of Arts, University 
of Zurich (CH) and at the Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven (NL). In these 
presentations an overview of available web tools and services that are useful for teaching 
and learning were given. Application scenarios in education were identified, and 
opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use were 
discussed. 
                                                
2 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) wiki. http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/  
3 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) weblog. http://sowebedu.wordpress.com/  
 3 
• Hands-on workshops (related to objective 1 and 2): 
At the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) hands-on workshops to Blogging, 
Collaborative Writing (Wiki), and Microblogging (Twitter) for teachers, teacher trainers, 
and faculty members were conducted. Workshops to Social Networking (Facebook), 
Social Bookmarking, and Collaborative Idea Development (Mindmeister) are planned for 
May and June. In autumn semester hands-on workshop for File Sharing and 
Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and a second round of held 
workshops will be offered. 
• Knowledge exchange (related to objective 1 and 3): 
The pilot participants shared experiences and ideas about the use of social software and 
web2.0 tools and services as well as they identified and described application scenarios 
in education. Opportunities, limitations, and challenges were also identified and 
discussed. The key outcomes and the application scenarios in education are mentioned 
at the wiki. 
During this pilot different communication channels were used: 
- Social Web: Twitter (#sharetec, #sowebedu), Facebook, weblogs. 
- Online portals: TELeurope4, Share.TEC5, SWITCH6/eduhub.ch7. 
- E-mail/mailing lists: teacher education institutions, teacher educators and trainers, 
and teacher organizations e.g. in AT, CH, and NL. 
- Face-to-face networking. 
Target group 
The pilot targeted teacher students during their studies, teachers in practice, as well as 
teacher educators and trainers. The participants of the pilot were primarily recruited at 
networking events, presentations, and hands-on workshops. 
Evaluation 
The evaluation of the pilot focused on the following aspects: 
1. Analysis of the usage of the topic-based wiki pages using wikispaces analytics. 
2. Educational scenarios in relation to the topics. 
3. Qualitative analysis of the topics mentioned in the wiki. 
 
                                                
4 TELeurope is the social media hub for everything about technology-enhanced learning. It is the community 
platform of the European open network of excellence in technology-enhanced learning STELLARNET.EU. 
http://www.teleurope.eu/ 
5 http://portal.share-tec.eu/ 
6 SWITCH (serving swiss univeristies) provides innovative, unique internet services for the Swiss universities and 
internet users. http://www.switch.ch/  
7 eduhub is a platform for new learning technologies at Swiss universities. Its aim is to implement sustainable IT-
based methods in academic teaching, to exchange experiences and to promote collaboration. 
http://www.eduhub.ch/  
 4 
3. Results 
The SOWEBEDU8 wiki has 23 members, of which the majority contributed to the resources. 
The wiki covers eight main topics and one project description (Pinocchio2.0). Every topic 
provides rich information, such as definitions, tools and services, video tutorials, slides, 
descriptions of application scenarios as well as references to literature, studies, or websites. 
Wiki Topics 
The eight topics of the pilot focused on:  
- Social Bookmarking,  
- Collaborative Writing,  
- Social Networking,  
- Blogging (incl. Microblogging),  
- File Sharing,  
- Collaborative Idea Development,  
- Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management, and  
- Collaborative Analysis. 
All topics were described explicitly and enriched with references, tutorials and further 
information. 
Educational Scenarios 
For six topics application scenarios were developed: Social Bookmarking, Collaborative 
Writing, Social Networking, Blogging (incl. Microblogging), File Sharing, and Collaborative 
Idea Development. The topics Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and 
Collaborative Analysis were added at the end of the pilot. Therefore, no scenarios were 
formulated. All application scenarios in education are described elaborately in the related 
topic section at the wiki. 
Wiki Statistics 
The SOWEBEDU wiki activities started at the end of September 2010. The usage statistic 
shows a continuous growth of wiki page-views (see figure 2). More than 3000 page-views on 
the wiki were counted by the end of April 2011. Visitors come from all over the world. The 
prime origins of the visitors were in alphabetical order: Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, 
Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United 
Kingdom, and United States. 
From September 2010 until the end of that year9 Microblogging (372), Collaborative Writing 
(363), Blogging (261), Social Bookmarking (218), Wiki (160), Social Networking (126), and 
Collaborate Idea Development (122) were most interesting to the visitors. 
From January to the end of April 2011 the following topics were visited mostly: Wiki (346), 
Collaborative Idea Development (328), Social Web (310), File Sharing (286), Collaborative 
Writing (226), Blogging (222) and Social Bookmarking (208). 
                                                
8 Short form of SOcial WEB in EDUcation. 
9 http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/space/stats/page/2010  
 5 
  
 
  
 
Figure 2: Monthly access statistics of the SOWEBEDU wiki from 10/2010 to 4/2011 with the wikispaces statistics. 
 
4. Conclusions 
This report analysed the Share.TEC pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education 
and Teacher Trainingʼ (SOWEBEDU). The pilot facilitated a wiki and a weblog on the topic. 
With these facilities it brought together people who are interested in using social web for 
teaching and learning and engaged them in sharing their practical experiences. The Wiki 
provides a platform for this community of practice for exploring and analysing social web for 
educational purposes.  
The key results of the pilot are summarised by the following points: 
• A Network of teacher educators and teacher trainers, teachers in service and teacher 
students that are interested in using the social web for teaching and learning. 
• SOWEBEDU wiki: 
The wiki provides a platform for a community of practice for exploring and analysing the 
usage of social web in teaching and learning under real education conditions. It collects 
resources, fosters the discussions of related issues, supports sharing of information, 
describes application scenarios in education, and includes all results of this pilot. 
 6 
Furthermore, the wiki was uploaded into the Share.TEC portal as an open educational 
resource.  
• SOWEBEDU weblog: 
Additional to the wiki a weblog is provided. This blog covers news and information about 
the topics, pilot related issues and on going activities. 
• Cooperation with the E-Learning Coordination (ELK) at the Faculty of Arts, University of 
Zurich, CH:  
Together with the ELK team a presentation and hands-on workshops were planned and 
conducted at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, CH (UZH). 
• Workshop at Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven, NL. April, 21, 2011, 
Miniconference "Het gebruik van digitale collecties leermaterialen". 
 
5. Further activities 
The pilot has been successfully installed a small community that will continue to work with 
the provided platform. Beyond the scope of this pilot are the following actions that have been 
already initiated. 
• Webinar in cooperation with Switch, CH about Social Web for Teaching and Learning. 
• Additional workshops at the Faculty of Arts, UZH. 
• Contributions and further development of the wiki. 
 
6. Contact 
Marion R. Gruber, CELSTEC, Open Universiteit Nederland, NL (marion.gruber[at]ou.nl). 
 
 


Open Universiteit www.ou.nl Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education andTeacher TrainingCitation for published version (APA):Gruber, M. (2011). Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training.Document status and date:Published: 31/08/2011Document Version:Peer reviewed versionPlease check the document version of this publication:• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences betweenthe submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for thefinal version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website.• The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review.• The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.Link to publicationGeneral rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal.If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license above, pleasefollow below link for the End User Agreement:https://www.ou.nl/taverne-agreementTake down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at:pure-support@ou.nlproviding details and we will investigate your claim.Downloaded from https://research.ou.nl/ on date: 16 Jul. 2023 1 Final Report for Share.TEC Pilot   Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training From June 2010 to April 2011 Marion R. Gruber, Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL)   1. Introduction In this pilot we analysed the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training. It resulted in a wiki that can get used as an educational resource for teacher education and training. The wiki is open to educational researchers and practitioners and it has been added to ShareTECʼs open educational resources repository. The Horizon Report 20101 stated, a “new educational perspective, focused on collective knowledge and the sharing and reuse of learning and scholarly content, has been gaining ground across” (p. 13). “Open content has now come to the point that it is rapidly driving change in both the materials we use and the process of education. At its core, the notion of open content is to take advantage of the Internet as a global dissemination platform for collective knowledge and wisdom, and to design learning experiences that maximize the use of it.“ (Horizon Report 2010, p. 13) Related to this notion on open content and social software it is required to link this innovation potential to practice. This is best explored and analysed by using the tools under real educational conditions. Consequently, this pilot focused on connecting teacher trainers and educational practitioners for sharing experiences of using social software in teacher education and teacher training. The pilot had the following objectives for the participants. 1. Learn about available web tools and services that are useful for teacher students during their studies, teachers in practice, and teacher educators and trainers.  2. Develop practical experiences for using selected tools and services in educational scenarios.  3. Identify the opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use. 4. Share tools, experiences, and findings on the wiki. Based on these objectives good practices for educational applications of social software and web2.0 tools and services in teacher education and teacher training were discussed and identified. Helpful information is covered at the pilot wiki (see figure 1). This information includes e.g. definitions, literature references, video tutorials, and links to useful online resources.                                                  1 Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010). The 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.  2  Figure 1: Screenshot of SOWEBEDU wiki.  2. Method Realisation The pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Trainingʼ (SOWEBEDU) was set up at the end of June 2010 from OUNL. After the summer break a wiki was established at Wikispaces (see figure 1).2 Additional, a weblog at WordPress was created and linked to the wiki.3  The following activities framed the wiki and the weblog: • Networking (related to objective 1 and 3): Networking activities took place at Online Educa Berlin (Share.TEC booth) in December 2010 as well as in the pilot presentations and workshops. • Collaboration with the E-Learning Coordination of the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) (related to objective 1, 2 and 3): This collaboration focused on the support of networking events and hands-on workshops that encouraged the faculty to participate in the pilot. • Presentations (related to objective 1 and 3): Presentations about social web in education were held at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) and at the Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven (NL). In these presentations an overview of available web tools and services that are useful for teaching and learning were given. Application scenarios in education were identified, and opportunities and limitations of the tools and services for their effective use were discussed.                                                 2 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) wiki. http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/  3 SOWEBEDU (Social Web in Education) weblog. http://sowebedu.wordpress.com/   3 • Hands-on workshops (related to objective 1 and 2): At the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich (CH) hands-on workshops to Blogging, Collaborative Writing (Wiki), and Microblogging (Twitter) for teachers, teacher trainers, and faculty members were conducted. Workshops to Social Networking (Facebook), Social Bookmarking, and Collaborative Idea Development (Mindmeister) are planned for May and June. In autumn semester hands-on workshop for File Sharing and Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and a second round of held workshops will be offered. • Knowledge exchange (related to objective 1 and 3): The pilot participants shared experiences and ideas about the use of social software and web2.0 tools and services as well as they identified and described application scenarios in education. Opportunities, limitations, and challenges were also identified and discussed. The key outcomes and the application scenarios in education are mentioned at the wiki. During this pilot different communication channels were used: - Social Web: Twitter (#sharetec, #sowebedu), Facebook, weblogs. - Online portals: TELeurope4, Share.TEC5, SWITCH6/eduhub.ch7. - E-mail/mailing lists: teacher education institutions, teacher educators and trainers, and teacher organizations e.g. in AT, CH, and NL. - Face-to-face networking. Target group The pilot targeted teacher students during their studies, teachers in practice, as well as teacher educators and trainers. The participants of the pilot were primarily recruited at networking events, presentations, and hands-on workshops. Evaluation The evaluation of the pilot focused on the following aspects: 1. Analysis of the usage of the topic-based wiki pages using wikispaces analytics. 2. Educational scenarios in relation to the topics. 3. Qualitative analysis of the topics mentioned in the wiki.                                                  4 TELeurope is the social media hub for everything about technology-enhanced learning. It is the community platform of the European open network of excellence in technology-enhanced learning STELLARNET.EU. http://www.teleurope.eu/ 5 http://portal.share-tec.eu/ 6 SWITCH (serving swiss univeristies) provides innovative, unique internet services for the Swiss universities and internet users. http://www.switch.ch/  7 eduhub is a platform for new learning technologies at Swiss universities. Its aim is to implement sustainable IT-based methods in academic teaching, to exchange experiences and to promote collaboration. http://www.eduhub.ch/   4 3. Results The SOWEBEDU8 wiki has 23 members, of which the majority contributed to the resources. The wiki covers eight main topics and one project description (Pinocchio2.0). Every topic provides rich information, such as definitions, tools and services, video tutorials, slides, descriptions of application scenarios as well as references to literature, studies, or websites. Wiki Topics The eight topics of the pilot focused on:  - Social Bookmarking,  - Collaborative Writing,  - Social Networking,  - Blogging (incl. Microblogging),  - File Sharing,  - Collaborative Idea Development,  - Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management, and  - Collaborative Analysis. All topics were described explicitly and enriched with references, tutorials and further information. Educational Scenarios For six topics application scenarios were developed: Social Bookmarking, Collaborative Writing, Social Networking, Blogging (incl. Microblogging), File Sharing, and Collaborative Idea Development. The topics Collaborative Research and Knowledge Management and Collaborative Analysis were added at the end of the pilot. Therefore, no scenarios were formulated. All application scenarios in education are described elaborately in the related topic section at the wiki. Wiki Statistics The SOWEBEDU wiki activities started at the end of September 2010. The usage statistic shows a continuous growth of wiki page-views (see figure 2). More than 3000 page-views on the wiki were counted by the end of April 2011. Visitors come from all over the world. The prime origins of the visitors were in alphabetical order: Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, and United States. From September 2010 until the end of that year9 Microblogging (372), Collaborative Writing (363), Blogging (261), Social Bookmarking (218), Wiki (160), Social Networking (126), and Collaborate Idea Development (122) were most interesting to the visitors. From January to the end of April 2011 the following topics were visited mostly: Wiki (346), Collaborative Idea Development (328), Social Web (310), File Sharing (286), Collaborative Writing (226), Blogging (222) and Social Bookmarking (208).                                                 8 Short form of SOcial WEB in EDUcation. 9 http://sowebedu.wikispaces.com/space/stats/page/2010   5       Figure 2: Monthly access statistics of the SOWEBEDU wiki from 10/2010 to 4/2011 with the wikispaces statistics.  4. Conclusions This report analysed the Share.TEC pilot ʻSocial Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Trainingʼ (SOWEBEDU). The pilot facilitated a wiki and a weblog on the topic. With these facilities it brought together people who are interested in using social web for teaching and learning and engaged them in sharing their practical experiences. The Wiki provides a platform for this community of practice for exploring and analysing social web for educational purposes.  The key results of the pilot are summarised by the following points: • A Network of teacher educators and teacher trainers, teachers in service and teacher students that are interested in using the social web for teaching and learning. • SOWEBEDU wiki: The wiki provides a platform for a community of practice for exploring and analysing the usage of social web in teaching and learning under real education conditions. It collects resources, fosters the discussions of related issues, supports sharing of information, describes application scenarios in education, and includes all results of this pilot.  6 Furthermore, the wiki was uploaded into the Share.TEC portal as an open educational resource.  • SOWEBEDU weblog: Additional to the wiki a weblog is provided. This blog covers news and information about the topics, pilot related issues and on going activities. • Cooperation with the E-Learning Coordination (ELK) at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, CH:  Together with the ELK team a presentation and hands-on workshops were planned and conducted at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zurich, CH (UZH). • Workshop at Studiecentrum Open Universiteit, Eindhoven, NL. April, 21, 2011, Miniconference "Het gebruik van digitale collecties leermaterialen".  5. Further activities The pilot has been successfully installed a small community that will continue to work with the provided platform. Beyond the scope of this pilot are the following actions that have been already initiated. • Webinar in cooperation with Switch, CH about Social Web for Teaching and Learning. • Additional workshops at the Faculty of Arts, UZH. • Contributions and further development of the wiki.  6. Contact Marion R. Gruber, CELSTEC, Open Universiteit Nederland, NL (marion.gruber[at]ou.nl).   

https://research.ou.nl/files/1034012/ShareTEC-pilot_report_SOWEBEDU.pdf

Social Software and Web2.0 in Teacher Education and Teacher Training

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