Really interesting research paper from FutureLab in the UK titled Social Software and Learning . The paper is introduced thus:

This paper is focused on exploring the inter-relationship between two key trends in the field of educational technologies.

In the educational arena, we are increasingly witnessing a change in the view of what education is for, with a growing emphasis on the need to support young people not only to acquire knowledge and information, but to develop the resources and skills necessary to engage with social and technical change, and to continue learning throughout the rest of their lives.

In the technological arena, we are witnessing the rapid proliferation of technologies which are less about ???narrowcasting??? to individuals, than the creation of communities and resources in which individuals come together to learn, collaborate and build knowledge (social software).

It is the intersection of these two trends which, we believe, offers significant potential for the development of new approaches to education.

The big questions explored in the paper include:
– How do we learn in an era of connection and collaboration?
– What is social software?
– Does learning change in an information society?
– How do we move towards ???c-learning????

With a growing amount of information appearing on the web about social software and the emergence of Web2.0 technologies, it is good to see some thinking like this that explores what the impat might be in our classrooms and schools.