Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Cons of Social Media for E-Learning

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The link to his ebook (73 page PDF) appears in his RSS feed, but not the web version of the same post, which is interesting. No matter, it's free and worth a look. To the post: it caught my eye when I found myself sympathizing with how difficult it is to keep up. This is my job and I'm in awe of how a simple thing like computers and websites became this great tangled mass of applications, standards, protocols and formats. And that's just the surface level! And then there's the way the internet has changed from being a place where people share with each other to a place where people relentlessly market themselves (maybe rereading his post was what led him to remove the link to his book). That said, I think he's wrong when he says "Social media is what you make of it." Companies like Facebook and Twitter are working very hard to make sure you can't make it into something that works for you - they need it to work for their advertisers. And we need to rethink 'social'. It's not just 'conversations'. I want to write well-thought-out pieces and engage in thoughtful and reasoned criticism - not conversation. Just saying.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 25, 2024 08:14 a.m.

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