1© Simon Buckingham Shum
Sensemaking & SocialLearn…in 5 mins
Simon Buckingham Shum
Knowledge Media Institute, Open U, Milton Keynes, UK
Open U: http://www.open.ac.uk/about
SocialLearn: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn
Me: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs
Social Computing Symposium, Redmond, Oct. 2008
Licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License
2© Simon Buckingham Shum
Sensemaking
“Sensemaking is about such things as
placement of items into frameworks,
comprehending, redressing surprise,
constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit
of mutual understanding, and patterning.”
Karl Weick, 1995, p.6
Sensemaking in Organizations
3© Simon Buckingham Shum
In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to arguetruth/plausibility are offirst order importance
4© Simon Buckingham Shum
In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to arguetruth/plausibility are offirst order importance
Representationsexternalise anddistribute cognition,mediate discourse,negotiate boundaries
5© Simon Buckingham Shum
In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to arguetruth/plausibility are offirst order importance
Representationsexternalise anddistribute cognition,mediate discourse,negotiate boundaries
Arguably, social computing forsensemaking will make it easy to shareand annotate representations andoverlay conceptual and social networks
6© Simon Buckingham Shum
Ideas as embeddable social objects,overlayed on a social network
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/2008/10/science-web2-social-notworking
cohereweb.net
7© Simon Buckingham Shum
SocialLearnis one tool in
cohereweb.net
8© Simon Buckingham Shum
What does a University look like as aWhat does a University look like as a
disaggregated, interoperabledisaggregated, interoperable suite of suite of
learning serviceslearning services integrated via an integrated via an
open web platformopen web platform competing in a competing in a
online marketplaceonline marketplace??
Why SocialLearn?
9© Simon Buckingham Shum
The Digital Commons: you are what youshare. Open Educ. Resources movement.
Why SocialLearn?
How to make it sustainable?
10© Simon Buckingham Shum
dudu??
Why SocialLearn?
An online marketplace brokering learners, mentors and providers?
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Learner-centric environment
Personalised, mobile
instruction and
information feeds
Personalised
resource archivesLearner-selected
learning mentors
Learner-selected
peer support network
12© Simon Buckingham Shum
The Social Learner…! Connected via the SocialLearn API, they could smoothly
exchange important learner-centric data
API
API
API
API
13© Simon Buckingham Shum
Web Dashboard [Contacts + Stream]
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From 30,000 feet…
SocialLearn
server
and Website
• Identity
• Portfolio
• Activity History
• Social Network
2Learner
manage your
learning goals
Micro
Learner
micro-blog your
thoughts,
learning goals
and resources
Coherecohereweb.net
manage connections
between learning
goals/resources/ideas
15© Simon Buckingham Shum
16© Simon Buckingham Shum
Social computing pedagogy?…
learning conversations
learning design patterns
learning exchanges
learning paths
learning relationships
learning architectures forparticipation
17© Simon Buckingham Shum
Business scenarios
B2C“Facebook for Learning”
“Life/Learning Coach”“eduBay”
B2BCorporate CPD
HEIsPublishers
OUX Extension of currentOpen U services
18© Simon Buckingham Shum
Acknowledgements
http://flickr.com/photos/thefangmonster/352439602/sizes/s/
http://cohere.open.ac.uk
http://flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195/sizes/s/
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/
http://web-2-0.gemzies.com/show/entry_3402/RSS_logo.html?tag=1554