Mash it UP!

(mash up forum)



This week is all about looking at Web 2.0 tools and assessing how they could be used in learning. We know that we need to pay attention to both social and technological trends as they come along, not necessarily so we can jump on the band wagon, but so that we can assess their usefulness for learning. But the question is how do we use social media creatively. (oh and this is a question asked across the learning word in both business and education)

Mostly we have been looking at mashups...which seem to have struck everyone's imagination in some way or another. (So I felt the need to write about it today in order to put it in hibernation - it's far too distracting!)

Now Wikipedia very clearly tells us there are several kinds of mashup, ranging from the classic music and video mashup, to the new digital mash up - which got a lot of people confused, but made for some very entertaining discussions and links. What I like most about mashups is the creativity. Whether it's teacher centric or learner centric, it should help to take data and use it in a new and creative way. I bet loads of us are creating mashups without even realising it. I had by using this in a presenting session, alongside other media from u-tube to get learners to evaluate about the presentations being made. There are some truly amazing mashups out there and links to those shared in the tutor forum are below. In fact our new globe trekker site, has to be a mashup!

How could I use this in the learning I help create? At the moment I think that mashups may be more of a tool in the work that we do, rather than learning. I can see numerous uses for streaming data and linking the census to googlemaps. At present we don't really work creatively with learners online, although there will be pockets of volunteers that could adopt this kind of approach. The biggest realisation has to be the capabilities of the learners and the technology they have at hand. Often Mash ups, as exciting as they are, are quite time consuming and require a little bit of techie know how. My learners are volunteers, so we want to make their learning as simple to engage in as possible - however that doesn't mean that I will stop using utube mashups......

Some great examples or articles on mashups. (thanks to my fellowes for sourcing these!)

Health map
Student Mashups
Mashups in education
Geography
Mashable
Sea level rise

10 easy ways to mash  it up
Education Mashups
Horizon report 2008
Dr Mashup (set text)
potential educational uses

Of course this then leads us to question what is knowledge and is everything a remix?
Everything is a remix