Cloudworks as a 'pedagogical wrapper' for LAMS sequences: supporting the sharing of ideas across professional boundaries and facilitating collaborative design, evaluation and critical reflection

Cloudworks is a specialised social networking site for sharing, debating and co-creating ideas as well as designs and resources for teaching, learning and scholarship in education. The site has been co-funded by JISC and The Open University, and has ca.2500 registered users and visitors from 165 countries (May 2010). Fundamental to the development of the site has been the belief that one of the key challenges in encouraging more innovative learning design is getting teachers to share designs and ideas. Despite the fact that there are numerous repositories of good practice, case studies, learning objects and Open Educational Resources (OER), their impact on practice has been limited (McAndrew and Santos, 2008). Yet in interviews and workshops, when asked what would they find most helpful to enable them to make better use of technologies in their design practices, teachers consistently say that they want examples of good practice and access to others to share and discuss ideas with (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007). This paper will explore how Cloudworks might be used as a ‘pedagogical wrapper’ for LAMS sequences, supporting the sharing of ideas across professional boundaries and facilitating collaborative design, evaluation and critical reflection.