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Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments

These statistics have been submitted to Dafne Gonzalez so that she could prepare a final report of EVO 2009 to be sent to the TESOL CALL-IS, EVO sponsor, to be presented at the TESOL Convention in Denver, Colorado, 2009.   The details below were entered into a Survey Monkey survey set up for that purpose.

1. Session title:

Multiliteracies for Social Networking and Collaborative Learning Environments

2. Please, write the names of the moderators and co-moderators in your session

Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Jennifer Verschoor, Doris Molero, Dennis Oliver

Joao Alves acted as greeter

3. Please, write the links to the platforms and other tools you used for your session.

Yahoo Group   http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/multilit/

Google Group   

Wiki   http://havingalookatmultiliteracies.pbwiki.com/

Blog   http://havingalookatmultiliteracies.blogspot.com/ and http://multiliteracies.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

Forum   http://multiliteracies.ning.com/forum

Web page   

Social bookmark   http://delicious.com/tag/evo2009mlit and http://groups.diigo.com/groups/evo2009mlit

Map   

Start page   http://goodbyegutenberg.pbwiki.com/

Social network   http://multiliteracies.ning.com/

Widgets   

Virtual rooms   http://tinyurl.com/y3eh

Podcast   http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com/

Twitter   http://twemes.com/evo2009mlit and http://search.twitter.com/search?q=evo2009mlit

4. Please, briefly explain the purpose for each of the applications you mentioned in the previous question.

• Yahoo Group - Brought the group together initially and because it sends email to each member it proved to be our most straightforward means of communication throughout the course  
• Wiki - http://havingalookatmultiliteracies.pbwiki.com/ was a sandbox available to all participants.  18 participants started pages there.
• Blog - Participants most effectively used the blogs provided by Ning at http://multiliteracies.ning.com/profiles/blog/list. The sandbox blog at http://havingalookatmultiliteracies.blogspot.com/ allowed its members to post comments but there was little development there from 2009 (it had been used previously).  Vance had intended to set it up with a Posterous blog which would allow participants in the blog to email to Posterous and have their posts automatically appear at Blogger, but as the participants were gravitating to the Ning blogs it was decided that this would further diffuse participation.  In a future rendition of the course it would be good to have an blog-through-email facility set up.
• Forum - The Ning forum http://multiliteracies.ning.com/forum was popular with participants but we never really learned how to use its RSS feeds and without that postings easily went un-noticed.
• Web page - we interacted in many online spaces but not through a static web 1.0 web page
• Social bookmark - Participants used both Delicious http://delicious.com/tag/evo2009mlit and Diigo .  One moderator started a Diigo group for us at http://groups.diigo.com/groups/evo2009mlit but it was not perhaps used to its potential.  Also with Delicious we should have started a delicious group where posters could have posted FOR:evo2009mlit (next time :-)
• Start page - http://goodbyegutenberg.pbwiki.com/ was a wiki for moderators only.  We put the syllabus and all relevant links here, including the events schedule, which linked in turn to our recordings and podcasts
• Social network - We used a Ning http://multiliteracies.ning.com/ which worked well to the extent we were able to discern how to use it. This was a learning experience for moderators and students alike.  In the hands of a master facilitator who knows the tool in and out, the Ning clearly has potential. Our experiment with it moved the moderators further toward that skill, and the participants added much content but due to unfamiliarity (perhaps) did not interact much with one another.
• Virtual rooms - We mainly used the Webheads Elluminate room at http://tinyurl.com/y3eh although some sessions took place in other venues. All our Elluminate sessions were recorded and posted at our events page: http://goodbyegutenberg.pbwiki.com/Events_Schedule
• Podcast - We rendered all our Elluminate recordings into mp3 and put them at a syndicated podcast site http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com
• Twitter -Twemes inexplicably stopped working at the end of the course.  Vance had set up a Twemes on our tag evo2009mlit but his post on explaining how that worked was the only one showing at http://twemes.com/evo2009mlit for most of the course (Vance hash tagged many tweets #evo2009mlit in an attempt to get them to appear there.  They never appeared though there are 4 such posts as I check just now). We got better results using Summize http://search.twitter.com/search?q=evo2009mlit

5. Please, write the total number of messages in your session, and, if possible, by week.  

Total Yahoo Group messages = 411

Pre-session  Jan 1-11 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (57 / 38) = 95 total

Week 1   Jan 12-18 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (53 / 49) = 102 total

Week 2   Jan 19-25 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (57 /31 ) = 88 total

Week 3   Jan 26-Feb 1 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (19 / 7) = 26 total

Week 4   Feb 2-8 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (27 / 21) = 48

Week 5   Feb 9-15 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (17 / 8) = 25

Week 6   Feb 16-22 - YahooGroup (moderator/participant) = (18 /9 ) = 27

In addition there were 70 posts and replies to Ning forums, 6 comments made on 10 Ning blogs (not a very good record I'm afraid), and numerous comments to 18 sandbox wiki pages, predominantly made by one especially caring moderator.

The following graph shows number of moderator YGroup messages in blue and those for participants in pink, week by week in the session.

6. How many artifacts--blogs, podcasts, Webpages, videos, etc. were created by your participants during the session?

• Blogs:   10 in just the ning; perhaps a dozen more 'in the wild'?  It's hard to say; many of the participants already had blogs, and our aggregation tools failed to turn up postings being made in the blogosphere though many of the participants tagged assiduously. The only blog hit turned up by a Technorati search on http://technorati.com/tag/evo2009mlit?authority=n&language=en despite initial efforts to make that system work was http://mamez.wordpress.com, though at the end of the course a posting also appeared in the Technorati listing from http://adVancEducation.blogspot.com
• Web pages:   
• Podcasts:   16 at http://vance_stevens.podomatic.com
• Surveys / interactive exercises:   Dennis created an introductory survey; not sure where/whether he has blogged his findings though he reported them to moderators.  A survey was of course done at the end of the session, and results of that survey could be placed here.
• Wikis:   18 wiki pages started in the havingalookatmultiliteracies wiki
• Videos: There was a participant video in the havingalookatmultiliteracies blog but it appears to have been posted in 2007.  Vance embedded it in the Week 1 wiki page at goodbyegutenberg
• Webcasts - We did numerous synchronous Elluminate sessions
• Slidecasts   3 or 4 were produced (one by Nelba, two by Vance .. more?)
• Games   
• Lesson Plans   
• Others   

7. How many live events did you arrange during the session? 16 

Text chats   6 at http://tappedin.org

Voice-text chats   

live sessions in virtual rooms   16 (all subsequently podcast)

8. How many guest speakers did you have? 15

Were the sessions with the guest speakers synchronous or asynchronous? synchronous

What platforms did you use? Elluminate and Tapped In

Names of guest speakers    

Kim Cofino, Vance Stevens, George Siemens, Gladys Baya, Doris Molero, Curt Bonk, Graham Stanley, Maggie Tsai, Stuart Selber, Cristina Costa, Kip Yellowjacket (with Jennifer Verschoor and Nelba Quintana), Mark Kramer, Robin Good, Rick Rosenberg

Platforms for synchronous sessions   Elluminate http://tinyurl.com/y3eh

Platforms for asynchronous sessions   Tappedin http://tappedin.org

9. Please, answer the questions below

Are you keeping your platform open after the session? Yes 

Are you planning to keep the discussion going? Yes, postings are still being responded to now

Would you like to offer this session again next year? Possibly 

Are you attending the TESOL Convention in Denver? Yes (Vance)

If so, are you presenting at the Convention? Yes (Vance)

If so, are you planning an informal gathering? Yes, I think we should do that 

If so, are you attending the get-together in the Networking Mall? The what?? I don´t know yet (Vance)

10. Please, write your comments about the session: problems, successes, and also any feedback from participants that you consider relevant to mention.