Social Media Classroom

Howard Rheingold just announced the launch of the Social Media Classroom.

In an educational setting, the social media classroom is designed to augment or—when physical co-presence is not possible—to replace face-to-face interaction. The power derived from using social media in group learning processes comes not from a more efficient computerized extension of older communication forms—the classroom discussion, texts to be read, essays and theses to be written. The power of social media in education and elsewhere derives from their affordances for forms of communication and social behavior that were previously prohibitively difficult or expensive for more than a tiny elite to benefit. Forums afford many-to-many, multimedia, asynchronous discussions among small or large groups, regardless of distance, over extended periods; blogging affords the expression of individual voice, the emergence of a market for intelligent information-filtering and knowledge-dissemination, and public interactions in the form of comments; wikis enable collaborative document and knowledge creation as well as web-building as a learning method; social bookmarking makes possible simple, bottom-up, collective knowledge-gathering; microblogging and chat add synchronous online text channels that can be tuned and cultivated for specific purposes.

Pretty cool.

Palin a closet social liberal?

I was surprised to hear today that Sarah Palin told Fox News that she reads The Economist. I suppose Sarah knew she was taking flak for not being able to name a single news outlet when she was recently asked where she got her news. Surely The Economist is a reputable, serious source of information. Honestly, I couldn't agree more.

But hearing this from Palin reminded me of a letter from the editor of The Economist sent to Savage Love a couple years back. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Savage Love is a sex advice column that's syndicated across the country. Dan Savage is a strong advocate for sensible government policy on social issues and equal rights.

In one letter to the column, a reader commented that they assumed they are one of the few people who read both Savage Love and The Economist. The following week, the Economist's editor submitted the following letter:

Dear Dan Savage: I was flattered to hear that you and your readers had picked up our reference to santorum in The Economist, but I just wanted to disagree with—or hope to disagree with—your reader who ventured that they were unusual in reading both Savage Love and The Economist. I hope very much they are not. Although nonreaders often think of us as a conservative magazine, we've actually always been socially highly liberal, whether on immigration, gay rights, or many other things, including favouring the legalization of drugs. The Economist was among the first mainstream publications, on either side of the Atlantic, to advocate legal recognition of gay partnerships when I ran a cover on the subject in 1996 and then another in 2004.

Our readership is younger than that of other current-affairs or business publications, and I like to think that, like us writers, they are thoughtful, intelligent folk. But you were right: It is not only gay activists who use the term santorum in that way. Maybe being edited in London explains why we got that wrong.
Bill Emmott, Editor
The Economist, London

Maybe Governor Palin is more thoughtful and open-minded than I give her credit for.