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The University of South Australia and Purdue University (Indiana) launched the "Grammar Gang Blog" in June 2008, as a collaborative forum for talking about language. The blog reaches a far-flung community of learners from Australia to the United States, Brisbane to Bangalore and Ghana to Germany. The Grammar Gang--where Owls meet Possums--started as a practical way to share knowledge about the function of grammar in academic writing at university. Two years later, the collaboration has grown to include the University of Adelaide. The Grammar Gang demonstrates how social software has given us an easy pathway to interact globally with those who have a common love of language. This paper discusses the way in which social software can be used for learning and global community building between students, university staff and their institutions. (Contains 4 figures.)

The textbook tradition has stood the test of time since the basic features of texts have remained stable for the past 400 years. However, the role of the textbook as the major authority in the transmission of knowledge is under severe threat. Interviews with students undertaking a compulsory topic in immunology indicated that the majority of students did not study their textbook in the manner expected by their professor. In this paper we attempt to examine the role of textbook in relation to advent of modern technologies that these students proved adept in using. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]