Todd Bryant (2006) beschreibt in seinem Artikel Social Software in Academia den Einsatz von Blogs, Wikis, VoIP und social bookmarking & networking als Einsatzinstrumente in der Hochschullehre, um die Diskussionen auch ausserhalb des Seminarraumes weiterzuführen. Interessant scheint mir aber der Abschnitt Coming Next (Hervorhebung MS):

„Some emerging trends in social software are worth keeping an eye on.The first is the addition of geographic information system (GIS) data that allows the social software sites to introduce an aspect of physical space. Plazes, for example, is a social networking site that adds another dimension by marking the GIS location of each user when they post and asking them to provide a picture and other information.
This could expand the possibilities for education in social networking sites tremendously. Imagine, for example, instructing each student in a German class to explore a small part of Berlin. Students can peruse pictures and information about each public building, restaurant, bookstore, and other feature in their assigned areas as they move along the street. Furthermore, users can speak with people attached to these places, such as the owner of a bookstore or a frequent diner at a local restaurant. Before they leave home, students heading abroad can begin exploring the area surrounding the place where they will be living and the people who have provided the information.It’s not hard to see how the idea of physical space is tied to the growing use of mobile devices. Mobile blogging, or moblogging, is popular not only because it allows people to blog from anywhere but also because where the blogger is posting from can be relevant as well.
Bloggers writing about natural disasters, geology, or political protests can now post from anywhere and mark their location, which can
then be used by readers to view satellite photos of the area from Google maps or Microsoft’s new service, TerraServer.Most of the sites listed here offer RSS feeds orAPI interfaces that allow other programmers access to the information stored on them. Blogs provide pages that function as wikis, and both blogs and wikis provide plug-ins that let users post pictures stored on Flickr. Podcasting has become part of our lexicon as more people post MP3 files to their blogs, and Skypecasting is becoming more popular as people post their conversations, interviews, and language exchanges to their blogs. Our opportunities to extend the classroom will certainly increase as these technologies continue to integrate and expand.“

Was ist Skypecasting, und wofür soll das bitte schön gut sein? Braucht man nach der Podcasting Euphorie wieder ein neues Modewort?