SESSION: Social Networking in Education – A Panel Discussion (Hargadon, Steve)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by CUE on February 19, 2008 at 3:33pm

This panel will look at social networking for teacher professional development, for classroom use, and as part of a growing trend toward maturing Web 2.0 technologies that create engaged learning environments. The panel will discuss what social networks are, their pros and cons for use in and out of the classroom, and what practical experiences educators are having using them. Attendees will also discuss their use of the CUE2 social network as part of the conference.

Background:

MySpace is an early example of social networking, but it is not the only use--far from it. What social networking software does very, very well is allow a new user to come in to a collaborative environment and feel comfortable. It's helpful to go to Wikipedia for a definition: "A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software. Most social network services are primarily web based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on." As you can see, a social network is actually a collection of Web-based tools.

The popularity of social networking in education can be seen by the rapid growth of teacher development networks like Classroom 2.0 (www.classroom20.com), a social network that currently has over 6000 registered users and keeps growing every week. CUE.org will, in fact, be using a social network to help enhance the 2008 Conference. The idea of being able to create your own social network is a pretty new one, and makes a lot of sense for education. There are now a growing number of programs that allow you to create a social network around anything (class, school, family, sports team, and even events, like a wedding). This is a new trend that will give create control and confidence in the social network as an educational tool.

MySpace is an early example of social networking, but it is not the only or best use of the technology--far from it. MySpace is actually a very good example of one thing: how readily users adopt social networks. 120,000 or so new blogs are created every day, which of course seems like a lot. However, 375,000 new people join MySpace a day. If blogging is like walking on stilts, and using wikis is like riding a unicycle, then social networks are like driving a car. Easy, fun, powerful, and with lots of "bling!" Users come in such numbers because the software is easy to use, and seems to satisfy some interesting "human" needs by allowing the kind of self-expression that we would normally associate with our physical spaces.

▶ Reply to This