EDU 2.0 adds Social networking feeds

We just added Facebook-like features to EDU 2.0 such as home feeds and class feeds. This has effectively upgraded EDU 2.0 from an "LMS" to an "LMS+", because it's starting to blur the boundaries between an LMS and a social networking environment. This will become even more evident when we release support for "learning circles" in a month or so.

Here's what a typical new user home page looks like. Like Facebook, it shows a news feed of all the events, assignments, friend posts, and class posts from all the relevant activities in the EDU 2.0 learning network. It also provides a clear display of today's activities, upcoming events, notifications, online friends, etc. You can click in the top box to post to your blog, and all your friends automatically see the post in their feed by default.

Each class also has its own feed that only displays items that are relevant to that class. If you post to a class feed, it goes to your class blog instead of your personal blog.

In a nutshell, EDU 2.0 now includes a seamless blend of LMS and social networking features.

Comments

[Billeisenhauer]

This new feature makes great sense for this kind of application. EDU 2.0 keeps looking better and better!

[Ed Jones]

Will be interesting to see how this plays out. What will be the learning benefit, and the costs to learning?

I'm thinking of the MIT study featured in PBS' Digital show:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/split-focus/multitasking-at-mit.html?play
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/split-focus/multitasking-at-mit.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/living-faster/where-are-we-headed/your-brain-on-google.html?play

Well, nuts...Can't find the video of the psych experiment. They tested students on simple tasks, and the multi-taskers did worse.

I know that my programming suffers greatly if I allow myself to freely follow the web. (At the moment I feel I have to).

[Graham Glass]

Hi Ed,

I think perhaps you're misunderstanding the features we've added.

It's primarily to provide school- and class-centered feeds of comments, news, assignments, lessons, announcements, etc. Each class gets its own feed and teachers can restrict the use of the feed if they like. Generally speaking, it will make it much easier for teachers and students within a class to communicate and share class-focused information.

So it's not intended to be used by students for informal chatting like Facebook, even though it uses the same metaphor and underlying mechanisms.

Hope this makes sense!

Cheers,
Graham