We don't doubt that "social learning" tools are either going to prove useful and popular or the equivalent functionality will eventually just be built into a student or a faculty member's tool kit for teaching and learning.

This article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Marc Parry and Jeffrey R. Young discusses the concept, one early failure, and then takes a look at four of what the authors consider to be the most interesting new tools available for use: FinalsClub, OpenStudy, GradeGuru, and Mixable.

The comments below the article are interesting, if predictable:

I agree with drfunz. Students are being co-opted by companies/sites like Facebook that claim to link them globally in an instant--like a party all the time. The reality is that many of these sites depend on dollars from advertisers who depend on number of hits. Eventually, it all falls down. Look at Wikipedia who has its founder pictured above the entry, flogging for money to support a "social research" site. That comes now after years of teachers saying that Wikipedia is nothing more than a superficial knowledge site for those who don't know ANYTHING about the topic and banning it as a real source of research.

Teachers who immediately run to social network sites because that is where the students go are often only doing two things: wanting to show the students they are hip and cool, and therefore worthy of respect, OR letting the tail wag the dog--letting student habits dictate pedagogy. "Just in time" is a phrase that applies to shipments of goods, not learning. Students who learn "just in time" by looking it up, carrying PowerPoint sheets into tests, and only doing online research will forget that information very quickly--often before the test or paper due the next day. It's basic psychology: short term memory can only hold 7 items +/- 2 for 30 seconds. The only way to get it into longterm memory is to practice, restate, review--none of the processes that are part of the "click click" computer generation.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, Shaping the Higher Education Cloud, to access the resource described, below.

As well, this recent issue of EDUCAUSE Review is focused on higher education's computing cloud, including these two feature articles:

• Cloud Computing and the Power to Choose
• Looking at Clouds From All Sides Now

Read all of this and you will be a cloud computing expert!

Is collaborative planning regarding the shape of the higher education information technology "cloud," possible? What should we plan to put on the cloud? What should stay out of the cloud? This white paper, the product of a joint project of EDUCAUSE and NACUBO, should be required reading for anyone who might be part of campus teams considering IT planning issues:

The unsustainable economics of higher education’s traditional approaches to IT, increased expectations and scrutiny, and the growing complexity of institutional operations and governance call for a different modus operandi. So too does the mass consumerization of services, for which students and faculty are more likely to look outside the institution to address their IT needs and preferences, noted James Hilton, vice president and CIO, University of Virginia. Cloud computing represents a real opportunity to rethink and re-craft services for the academy. Among the greatest benefits of scalable and elastic IT is the option to pay only for what is used. Robust networks coupled with virtualization technologies make less relevant where work happens or where data is stored. Cloud computing allows the flexibility for some enterprise activities to move above campus to providers that are faster, cheaper, or safer and for some activities to move off the institution’s responsibility list to the “consumer” cloud (below campus), while still other activities can remain in-house, including those that differentiate and provide competitive advantage to an institution.