So.cl: Social Search (by Microsoft)/ Ricerca sociale e apprendimento

In this post I just copy (I state it very clearly) part of the FAQs appearing in the official blog and website of So.cl, that I discovered by chance today. So.cl (pronounced “social”) is an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.

• So.cl combines social networking and search, to help people find and share interesting web pages in the way students do when they work together.
• So.cl helps you create rich posts, by assembling montages of visual web content.
• To encourage interaction and collaboration, So.cl provides rich media sharing, and real time sharing of videos via “video parties.

Apart from Microsoft FUSE Labs, there are some other partners of So.cl, in particular selected schools (including University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University).
The So.cl search experience is powered by Bing; we use the public Bing APIs to display search result data. As students work together, they often look for the same content, and discover new shared interests by sharing results. These results can be web pages, images, or videos found through Bing. We see this trend today on many social networks, such as Twitter, where shared links spread virally and amplify popular content. So.cl experiments with this concept by letting you easily share links as you search. Unless you mark it as “private”, your search results, and any other data you post to So.cl may be viewed by all other So.cl users. It is notable to say that there are options to delete the search, ranging from deleting a single item, search or post, to deleting all your history, or your entire account. Finally, we can access So.cl through our Facebook account and as So.cl uses Facebook authentication, which means you use your Facebook account to log in, and your name and profile picture from Facebook appear in So.cl.

In Italiano:
Oggi ho casualmente scoperto So.cl, un progetto supportato da Microsoft FUSE Labs (e da molti altri qualificati partner, tra cui l’University of Washington, Syracuse University, e la New York University), cui si accede gratuitamente con il proprio account Facebook. So.cl è dedicato alla ricerca per l’apprendimento con un “taglio sociale”:

• So.cl combina la rete sociale e la ricerca, con l’intento di aiutare gli utenti a trovare e condividere pagine web interessanti, in modo tale che gli student lavorino insieme;
• L’intendimento di So.cl è di permettere agli utenti di creare post “ricchi”, cioè attraverso l’assemblaggio e montaggio di contenuto web visivo;
• Si vuole pure incoraggiare l’interazione e la collaborazione, quindi So.cl fornisce la possibilità di condividere contenuti mediatici complessi, video, stabilire dei “video parties”, ovvero video-conferenze articolate.

Il potenziale didattico di So.cl è ragguardevole, poiché punta a un mezzo comunicativo che capitalizza notevole attenzione in tutte le fasce d’età, cioè l’apprendimento visivo, e sottolinea l’importanza della socialità come elemento principale del processo di apprendimento, nell’ottica di una vicendevole attenzione: i partner della ricerca sociale contribuiscono a turno e verificano i propri apporti, verificano la qualità degli stessi, secondo il principio che in inglese va sotto il nome di peer learning (“apprendimento fra pari”).