Ananda Gunawardena (“guna”)
Computer Science
&
David Kaufer
English
Carnegie Mellon University
What we bring to the project
A human-centric view
A machine-centric
view
Salon vision
To extract and organize knowledge
around small groups
What Salon is
 A platform that supports social learning
 A content-centric platform that allows deep discussion




of all content related to the course
A discovery platform that allows users to find other
“interesting” users
A platform that allows teachers to get to know their
students better
A platform that allows students to get to know each
other
A platform that protects privacy of students
What Salon is not
 It is not a course management system
 It is not an ebook platform
 It is not just another highlighting tool
 It is not a document management system
We think most educational
technology systems are designed
from a system centric view
Do not support teacher thinking or
workflow
Salon is designed with a usercentric view
Salon handles most course related
tasks better
Teacher ask students to read and
prepare for class
 No other platform supports reading like Salon does
 Salon tracks and records student activities
 Social nature of the platform encourages active
participation
 How do you track reading with other
platforms/processes?




Course management systems?
Learning management systems?
Reading groups?
Polling/surveys?
Track Reading
Teacher ask students to complete
homework
 Salon enables small group homework completion


Individually
As a group
 How do other systems manage this process?
 Submitting completed homework online or on paper
Complete homework
Students have a lot of questions
about the assignment
 Salon enables immediate clarification on the context
 How do other systems handle this?



Discussion boards
attachments
Help sessions
Clarify Assignments
There are no good ways to
measure student’s prior knowledge
 Salon enables prior knowledge detection activities
 How do other systems handle this?



Pre course surveys
Polling
1-1 meetings
Measure Prior Knowledge
Tracking the activities of students
 Dash board is a way to track activities of each/all student(s)
Salon is Social
People I am interested in
Current activities of those I am interested in
These people are interested in me
I manage my Salons
How to create this social connection?
Click on anyone’s picture and find their interests
Salon Teacher Tools
Monitoring Class Activities
Monitoring Individual Students
Thomas Manzini
annotations
Performance in each unit
responses
discussions
Commenting
on others
How time spent
Salons Created: 2
Documents uploaded: 6
Annotations Made: 56
Responses Provided: 40
Commenting on others: 42
Open Discussions: 38
Filter
Salon is research based
Tone matching dictionaries
Expert humanist
Usability
Semantic similarity algorithms
Adaptive Book technologies
Scalability and performance
Alex Cheek
Interaction design
Information design
Joanna Wolfe
Reading and Annotations
How learning works
Eberly Center for Learning
Carnegie Mellon University
Salon Technology
Salon Technology and Statistics
 Flexible and Scalable platform
 asp.net, C#, Flex
 Transition into Cloud
 Virtual Salon server

php, html5, js
 Mobile Salon
 Android Tablet/phone Support
 ipad/iphone in the works (target date: January 2012)
 Statistics
 Current users: 8000+
 Documents uploaded : ~ 5637
 Salons created: ~ 670
 Separate Salon server Deployments: Grover City College

http://classroomsalon.gcc.edu
Funding and company Status
 Funded by
 National Science Foundation
 Gates Foundation
 CMU
 Spin-off Status
 Seed Funding by


innovation works
Heinz Endowment
 Business Relation Discussions
 Mc-Graw Hill
 HP
 Intel Capital
 Yahoo!
Thank you