Educational Social SoftwarE for contExt awarE computing: collaborativE mEthodS and human intEraction

The emergence of Web 2.0 triggered a general trend towards online social interactions and brought sociology in the global interactive picture. The emergence of Web 2.0 has brought about the opportunity to create new educational uses of Web 2.0 user centred software. Social software platforms, human networks, and human activities in Web 2.0 refer to a set of technologies for sharing information and communication. Web 2.0 has led to the creation of new technologies at a rapid pace. The participant as a learning community member is the central point in the learning opportunities provided by 2.0 approaches in e-learning. E-learning 2.0 puts the user as a learner and her community at the centre of the learning process. From a technical viewpoint, the integration of social software has created interesting new possibilities for organizing novel learning and working situations. From an educational viewpoint, this phenomenon created issues related to individual and social learning for internalisation and externalisation of information and knowledge (Vygotsky, 1978). Studies on relationships, practices, and activities with the use of tools in the purpose of learning appear to present contradictive results (EFQUEL, 2006; Cuban, 2001). Current learning management systems support administrative functions; thus, they target teachers’ information provision, resulting in most cases in poor learning opportunities for the learner. Studies on social relationships, interactions, and engagement between the e-learning participants, as well as practices and activities with the use of tools for the purpose of learning appear to present contradictive results. Thus, design for socio-cultural learning requires social tools; this means that social and personalised tools should be integrated within a learning platform. These issues in educational technologies appear to be connected to the computational history. Computing pioneers, such as Engelbart (1963), seemed to adopt a learning summit on using the machine for the ‘augmentation of human intellect.’ Shackel (1991) suggested that the designers need to enable human’s capabilities, while Mumford (1983) proposed that socio-technical systems design assists designers to maximize human gains while achieving business and technical excellence. Therefore, some answers lie in the principles of computing and in particular social computing. Social computing is concerned with the intersection of social behaviour and computational systems. According to Dourish (2004), there is a need to incorporate social understandings into interface design as the systems we use are embedded in systems of social meaning, fluid and negotiated between us and the other people around us. By incorporating understandings of how social practice emerges, we can build systems that fit more easily into the ways in which we work. In other words, tools designed using social understandings of interactions, in turn, enhance social interactions with computation. Is this feasible in educational computing?