Services
| Applied Social Media |
It is clear that social networking capabilities (the ability for users to easily interact and share information) is not simply a nice to have, but an integral part of any modern web application for education given the target market of education; today's generation.
When we stop seeing knowledge as an entity that is possessed within a person and start to cast it as a function of elements distributed across a system, we notice a dramatic impact on the education process: the educator becomes a supporter (not the center), the content is not as critical as the connections, learners find value in their aggregated perspectives, learners become content creators, and learning is continuous, exploratory, and sustained (not controlled or filtered by only one agent). Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens -- How technology and complexity are changing the nature of knowledge, connection and learningSo what do we mean by applied social media? We believe that to realize the true opportunity offered by social media that every application needs to to be aware of potential interactions and relationships. Social media "awareness" needs to be in the DNA of every transaction which takes place and every request needs to understand the user context, data context, relationships and adhere to security policies on a system wide and per user basis. The application needs have the means to tap into the systematic management and facilitation of human social relationships and interactions. Today's well known opt-in relationship formation sites like MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. provide a means for you to post information about yourself and establish connections for others interested in you. But an applied social application would transparently connect the dots based upon context and of course your own privacy policy settings. We believe that this level of application awareness in education will change the way knowledge and information are correlated and fundamentally improve the collaboration of students and educators. By creating a highly engaging and personal experience for all users we will be able to view information from a wider variety of perspectives, deepen our understanding of subjects and potentially discover new connections we may have been previously unaware. Users of applied social apps get a unique experience that combines the trust and intimacy of small group discussion with the ability to easily tap into close and trusted resources from access to an extended network of users, resources, and information. To facilitate the move to socially aware applications we have created the plugjamTM platform. 
|
