October 25, 2007

Social Learning Goals

The Learning Goal

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So this image is of all the learning goals listed on TwoBrains.  I thought it would cool to allow social collaboration at the "goal" level of learning. However, it seems that our user interface is in the way.  If you log into TwoBrains (it's free) and click "existing" goals, you will see this cloud of goals.  The bolder goals have more people associated or interested in them. So you can click a goal that you are interested in.  I realize there is a readability problem with the smaller goals.  That is something we should/could fix if we ever get the time and money.

The Resources to Learn

TwoBrains Resources

The other issue is that very few people who checked out TwoBrains actually identified learning resources that could support a goal.  I think, again, there is a problem with knowing how the system works. We could make it more intuitive. An instructional video would be great of course.

That's Del.icio.us

 TwoBrains del.cio.us Button

This button would also probably help a lot of people. It is where we integrated TwoBrains with del.icio.us the social bookmarking site.  So you don't have to enter resources by hand, you can just search the tags in your del.icio.us account and dynamically pull them into TwoBrains.  This is how I do it, because I have del.icio.us integrated into Flock.  So as I am checking out a web page, I can click the star, add a tag. Then later when I am reviewing my learning goals, I can pull the resource into TwoBrains as a match with the learning goal.

I realize you could have a social exchange around tags if you agreed upon what tag to use and TwoBrains real advantage is around what others are associated around goals.  Although I gone back to a resource I marked to a goal before.

Extending into the network

TwoBrains Badge

Another cool feature of TwoBrains is the badge.  This is a snippet of code that will display your top ten goals from TwoBrains.  This will allow a learner to declare that they are learning things and basically invite other to check it out.  It could use some flexibility, it might be a little big and maybe allow you to pick the number of goals you want to share, and we also want to show the number of people learning that goal on TwoBrains.

Well, if you are interested I hope that this helps. I have been meaning to write a lot more about TwoBrains, but hadn't had the chance.  I really like the concept and I truly hope that those who use the service will find some type of value in it.  It is really valuable to me to just see what other people are interested in. It kind of takes me back to my teacher roots of just wanting to help people understand.

If you have checked out TwoBrains, Thanks. If you haven't try it out and give us some honest feedback.

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3 comments:

  1. I think two brains are better than one that is a good name for an educational website

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  2. Thanks Nathan... we were just playing around and came up with it. We wanted it to be a little whimsical.

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