Tweet buttons alone won't make your course content social

Social software is not simply "tweeting" or "liking" professionally developed content. Social computing is a mode of human-technology interaction, a use case. We can identify at least three factors that affect "social" in software: the human usage intent, the software features that facilitate it, and the hardware form factors that embody it. Let's work backwards, starting with three hardware form factors often used in education: the desktop computer, the interactive whiteboard, and the mobile phone.

Desktop computers are stationary, often Internet connected, and generally allow input through web cam, keyboard, mouse, and microphone. Desktop computers are nearly ubiquitous and are generally installed into stable environments. But they are designed for single-user interaction. This means that they can be social in a global sense-- web cam chats for language learning-- but they are not locally social-- group work with one PC is not nearly as rich as group work with markers and a flipchart.

Desktop computers in a classroom will likely reduce "social" in that classroom, unless your idea of social is a bunch of people emailing each other stuff someone else did. I don't think that's social-- it's like taking a bulletin board and then turning the part about standing around it and joking with other people into sending memos.

On the other hand, interactive whiteboards can be social. In a classroom, an iWB brings everyone's focus to the same point. Different students can walk up to it and work at the same time. Here a tweet button is social because it can take user generated content, the annotations made on the whiteboard, and send them to others. For example a tweeted iWB annotation can become a persistent memory of the shared classroom experience, which is social in the immediate sense, people working together, and social in an asynchronous sense, sharing user generated content. This hits the three aspects of social: shared human usage, facilitating software, and supportive hardware.

Mobile can be, is, great at social, including the addition of tweet buttons. But the key is user generated content. A mobile phone with GPS and camera can extend personal presence and conversation across time and space, classic benefits of Internet-mediated content. Mobile phones also don't demand the user's total physical engagement. You don't have to get up and go to a special desk to use a mobile phone, like you do with a desktop computer. You don't have to turn your back on the audience, like you do with an iWB. In a way, it's strange that mobile phones are commonly chased out of classrooms and media labs. Compared to PCs and whiteboards, even compared to handwriting notes in a spiral notebook, phone-based text messaging and cameras are not disruptive. We should be encouraging students to text questions, to photograph notes on the board.

Why then are phones chased out of classrooms? I'd say it's because the classes are not social. This brings us to the human element of social. Phones in class are disruptive only if inter-student communication is disruptive. And that's only disruptive in a teacher-fronted class. There's a time and place for lectures, but to lecture only is poor pedagogy.

"social" has been a buzzword feature for a while. When iOS 5 drops this Fall, the fad will kick up again with enahanced Twitter-iPhone integration. Unfortunately, all this hype can confuse one into thinking that "social" is simply a bulletpoint feature. Be prepared for courseware updates that do nothing more than add a tweet button. Watch for even more newsfeed and corporate mouthpiece apps that simply add a Facebook Like option. This is as wrong as thinking that a postcard by the cash register is customer engagement.

So forget for the moment about what software and hardware is in your class. Is your pedagogy social? Even with great hardware and software, if you're not engaging the students in a dialogue, then you aren't social.