Still don’t know what social learning is? The basic idea is quite simple and starts from an irrefutable assumption: in this day and age, the concept of social has now developed 360 degrees, on multiple planes, and has increasingly invaded our lives. This is undeniable. Raise your hand if you are not entangled in any of the countless social networks on the Internet, from the classic Facebook, Twitter, etc., through all the other types of social offered by the network.
Well starting from this observation, as mentioned, here is the intuition: why not broaden the discourse and implement a system of social platforms in which the exchange of knowledge and knowledge can take place? A virtual school, if you will, however an interactive space in which both the concept of teaching and learning are present at the same time. As well as, of course, that of social. L’use of social media is now well-established and widely practiced in all fields, even by large companies in the work environment, which makes it necessary to simultaneously advance the world of education. Hence the idea of social learning, the translation of which in Italian would sound more or less like ‘social learning’: a didactic training based on knowledge shared on the network and the interaction of the various users willing to take part in this passage of knowledge. On the other hand, social interaction is a drift that is now irreversible, so if the majority of Internet users have long since put their lives in digital, we might as well take advantage of this trend to share knowledge with one another. Social learning is a parallel, interactive world, on the heels of social networking, capable of transporting what usually happens in classrooms or university classrooms into the virtual of the web. An education 2.0 as it has been dubbed by many. A cultural revolution that places at the basis of its work the concept of ‘democratic’, as is often the case with everything that moves in the network: in the Internet it is the users who judge what they consider valid by discerning it from the superfluous. An idea, if valid and successful, can reach the top of the net regardless of who launches it. This is also what happens with information, which finds in the network the ultimate in free circulation, and with the knowledge that each of us possesses: so why not pool it and share it with other users? Subject, of course, to the starting point that must guide anyone who surfs the Internet; that is, to have alertness and judgment and to be able to differentiate what is useful from what is not. Because not everything that circulates on the Internet is qualitatively good. Far from it. So here is the basic concept of social learning: large communities, along the lines of well-known socials such as Facebook, within which an exchange of knowledge takes place. Do I want to learn something new? Acquire knowledge that I lack? The logistical difficulties typical of classical training can be cut down and you can get what you are looking for while sitting in front of your PC.
Social learning abroad
Abroad, especially in the U.S., social learning has already been an active reality for some time: just think of Schoology, a flagship in the world of education 2.0 in the stars and stripes; it is a virtual platform created in 2009 for online education that allows users to create and share academic content as well as manage real virtual classrooms. Schoology’s interface deliberately recalls that of Facebook given the popularity, among young people, of the social network launched by Zuckerberg. In the U.S. Schoology is used for education by private citizens as well as schools. So is Edmodo, another social learning tool created in 2008 and used to date by about 70 thousand different U.S. institutions.
Italy and Social learning
In Italy, of course, we are not so far ahead; on the contrary, both because of cultural conformation and because of a world, the academic one, which in our country is particularly conservative and anchored in the past, the concept of social learning is struggling to take hold here. On the other hand, we are just beginning to open up to e-learning, or telematic learning characterized by the use of multimedia technologies for teaching, of which social learning is a kind of evolution. Or, at any rate, a next step. Among the existing social learning projects in our country are Brainly, based on an interaction of questions and answers to quizzes through which the user can obtain points and climb the rankings; Teach it, another virtual platform that offers the possibility for teachers and lecturers of a web space full of tools to independently create their own online course; Basecool, a community within which it is possible to choose courses in which to participate by being able to count on the presence of lecturers as well as interaction with other users. Projects that are still in the growth phase because to be in evolution is, here in our country, the very concept of social learning; we will see how long it will take before the possibility of using the network and the idea of social also for the construction and passage of knowledge is accepted in Italy as well.
