You don’t need the type of big, formal system you’d typically find in a university in order to learn, according to an academic.
“What you need is people that are sharing information … people that are interested in helping you learn through behavioral change,” says Jim Ferolo, assistant professor and chair of Bradley University’s interactive media department and member of the Tappestry team.
Jim’s Float Mobile Learning Symposium session, held during Techweek on June 25 at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart, honed in on informal and social learning, a way of acquiring knowledge that doesn’t require a formal classroom or instructor to profess information. Rather, informal and social learning, as Jim points out, can be as simple as having classmates converse with each other about a way to do something.
The volume of informal learning that has not been captured served as the backbone of why Float created Tappestry, the social network that allows people to store and then later retrieve what they’ve learned.
Throughout his session, Jim explains the successes and the pitfalls of working this project. He describes creating a user experience by displaying wireframes, incorporating what other companies have done well with their apps. Jim goes into detail about the Tappestry views and stream functionality, and shows a video from another UX designer on the project, Francesco Stagno d’Alcontres. Finally, he talks about how Tappestry differs from Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Jive and other social networks, as well as how it will be capable of integrating with other learning management systems.
