Learning Portals

Learning Portals is a social software system designed and implemented at Emerson College in Boston. It provides individual blogs, discussion forums, a news feature and a portfolio tool. It is also adaptable so that individuals can make small changes to their personal settings, as well as add features to its existing structure. For instance, links to a course wiki or del.icio.us are easily added.

The program offers an amazing amount of flexibility and extends the function of social software into the classroom context. The questions that arise have to do with the relative merit of network discussion in the context of a particular classroom. These questions will be addressed in future posts.