Social Networking
The first public use social networking website Classmates.com began in 1995. In 2005, MySpace grew 400 % with 28 million people most under 30 years of age. There were 19 million registered online to Friendster with most college students logging on Facebook. Social Networking is socializing with people online via a particular Web site. The online social networking community users share and explore common interests and activities. Chat line, messaging, email, video, file – sharing, blogging, forums, discussion groups, and applications are varies ways for users to interact.
There are social networking websites that focus on particular interests and there are others that do not. A few popular social networking websites include MySpace, FriendWise, FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, Facebook, Orkut, and Classmates. Without a main focus social networking websites have open memberships. Membership is available to all no matter what their beliefs, professions, or views are. Once a member you can create your own network of friends and exclude other web site members.
The advantage for website social networking is having potential of getting results is almost limitless. The reason your profile and the profile of others are available for review. Knowing who is who, what they can do, where they are, who they know, where they have been, and what they know is useful information to facilitate your successful endeavors.
As an educator Dana Lawit is passionate about finding meaningful ways to integrate technology into teaching and learning. As a special education teacher at a new and growing public high school in Brooklyn, New York she introduced a social network as a tool to support student learning and promote engagement
When I asked my ELA summer school students, "Have any of you ever heard of MySpace?" they couldn't figure out how to react. Was their teacher so out of it that's she's never heard of MySpace, or worse yet, did she think that they've never heard of MySpace. "Are you joking, Miss?" one student asked. I told my students it was a simple question, and they began to nod their heads that they had indeed heard of MySpace...duh. We discussed how MySpace, like Facebook, is an example of a social network. I then asked them how they would feel about using a social network like MySpace or Facebook for learning and they seemed skeptical. Sites like MySpace and our district’s proxies block Facebook, and our students are well aware of this. How could a social network be used for learning? At their core, social networks are a platform for individuals to form communities of interest. I explained that we would be creating a social network to discuss the book we'd be reading in our summer school class.
I decided to use Ning allows users to create their own networks around a particular topic. We created a private Ning site (similar to the more commercial MySpace and Facebook) for our students to discuss the book we were studying, “Island of the Blue Dolphins.” After reading certain chapters students logged onto the site and participated in discussion forums designed to support them in reflecting upon what they read and deepen their understanding of the content.
Soon some exciting things began to happen. First, timestamps indicated that students were accessing the site out of school, and completing assignments. This is an exciting observation for teachers to witness with any student, but seeing these students in particular, who so often seemed disengaged and not invested in school, get excited enough to work from home on an assignment was incredible! Next students starting going beyond the request of me, their teacher and began contributing to the site independently. Students figured out that the site was similar to other social networks they were already a part of, and something clicked inside - they wanted to contribute. The next thing I knew, my co-teacher and I weren’t the only ones leading the learning. Unprompted, the students eagerly began posting their own questions and reactions. If they had finished a part of the book early, they wanted to know if others had. Students began befriending each other, and even the principal.
Perhaps one of the most unexpected benefits of using the Ning was the ability for teachers to give individual feedback to students. The messaging system in Ning allowed my co-teacher and me to send words of encouragement, reminders about assignments, and updates about classwork. There's even a feature that allows users to invite students to events. We invited all of our students to attend a Vocabulary Quiz last week, and they all RSVP yes! All in all, our Ning site proved a great way to engage students in work I have found them reluctant to do otherwise.
The teacher’s approach falls into cognitivist, constructivist, and connectivist schools of learning. Creating an online social network meets students half way. Many students are already using the internet and technology to communicate with their peers and are consequently quite fluent with the nuances of adding friends, replying to messages, and checking for updates. Educators can appreciate the engagement of students, their independent drive, and the unexpected conversations and reflections that occur even away from school. Educators will professional benefit from different types of data they're able to collect from their students and different avenues with which to provide feedback, either messages to the whole class or just to an individuals.
www.whatissocialnetworking.com
www.ellclassroom.wordpress.com
www.theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com
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