I admit to being a sucker for new social media services. I explore them to see what they offer so that I can inform others and I also keep looking for useful implementations of services I think have unique value. I am also just opposed to “natural monopolies” described by some as a result of the network effect. I would summarize a network effect as – people go where people are and once there accept the actual services as provided with all existing faults because coordinating a move to something better service does not seem practical. I should probably work on that description, but I assume you get the idea. So, Facebook is a natural monopoly. I liked Google+ and Diaspora better and thought the opportunity to control who you shared what with (circles in Google+ and instances in Diaspora) was a superior way of doing things. Google+ is shutting down soon and Diaspora has never attracted the critical mass I think is needed. I do encourage you to take a look at Diaspora.
My new fascination is MeWe. MeWe is a collection of services – chat, groups, a personal timeline (like Facebook), and online storage (for files, images, etc.). It is free for basic services with a business model based on selling users extras – space for storage, pages, emojis, etc. If you won’t make money on ads and selling user information, you must have access to other revenue sources. I do not attempt to predict the success of online business models, but I do believe there must be an income stream of some sort to maintain infrastructure and support innovation. I wish MeWe success.
A feature I think should be of great interest to educators is the mechanism for control of access. In some ways, MeWe shares this perspective with Google+ and Diaspora. You make this decision for individual user experiences. For example, you can offer a public group or invite specific participants to a group. You can maintain multiple groups and set access opportunities for each depending on the audience you want to be involved.
I have decided to create a public group focused on one of my personal interests. I describe this interest as “layering for learning”. This description is my way of identifying online services that allow educators to embellish existing online content to improve the potential of the original content sources as instructional resources. I argue that these services are consistent with the goals of those who want to use open access content rather than textbooks and with approaches that emphasize the role of “educator as instructional designer”. I have written a Kindle Primer on this topic, but I have also written many blog posts and created YouTube tutorials that are freely available. My hope is to seed the group with some this existing free content and invite insights and suggestions from educators who see something of interest in these ideas. I am uncertain how else to get a group started from scratch.
Getting a group started is a challenge. When I am teaching, I can show such resources to students. Now that I am retired, getting educators to take a look is much more of a challenge. This is bucking the network effect in action. I hope you will take a look.
You must be logged in to post a comment.