Social Networks In Education

There are two addicting social networks I found. iGoogle at (http://www.google.com/ig) and Delicious at (http://delicious.com/) are both intriguing and resourceful sites.  When I first considered Delicious my thought was technology overload due to it promising to be what I consider a cousin to RSS feeds.  After some research and some initial hands on experience I like its promising aspects. Greenhow explains:

social bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, Diigo, and CiteULike, can provide the resources to facilitate a scholarly approach to teaching where teachers concerned with developing research-based best practices can collectively assemble, annotate, recommend, and share scholarly resources, such as books, journal articles, websites, and contacts (2009, p. 11).   

 

Again after some research I found this tool to be a tremendous asset to the learning environment.  Delicious not only allows one to access specific texts, but it moves beyond to create tags for better organization and recall and allows for social coordination.  That is to say, links can be established to other members of similar topic interest and the resources they found.  It is a social library and research team in one. Now as an educator, I will be able to assign writing or research tasks and have students work on them in class without having to access a library for resources. Secondly, I can have the adult learners work in groups to collaborate on projects.  In any scenario of incorporating recent learning I can see each group member taking on their role and one or two of those roles to act as the group researcher. Here members could act on the latest information regarding their topic to coordinate a team presentation.

As exciting as this sounds, I found it disheartening to have to launch and manage another site.  For that reason my second discovery provided me even greater joy.  What I longed for, in my young social technologic exploration, exists.  The ability to manage many sites at once came through in the form of Netvibes and iGoogle. Due to my GoogleReader and Blogspot account I stayed with what I figured would cause less of a transitional strain…iGoogle. iGoogle, and other products like it, use widgets to paste on to a dashboard for easy access.  Kroski explains, “With personalized start pages, you can access your favorite Web content simply by opening your browser” (2008, p. 43).  Finally, iGoogle is a tool for the web surfer that has everything, and wants their toys in front of them all at once.  (Of which I am a growing groupie as well.) Here again I see my adult learners using this tool to incorporate their favorite social media for the good of the class research.  Also, I would expect less resistance when I assign students to log onto the class blog and interact.  With the learners already accessing an iGoogle site for email, Twitter, Facebook, or other social interaction, the blog interaction would be just a click away and keep them in the same social mind frame.

Isn’t that what it comes down to? As the famous movie quip states “if you build it they will come” (Field of Dreams, 1989), if we want to reach the growing social media minded student, then we better build where they are then we can gain their trust and unlock their potential.

References:

 

Kroski, E. (2008). Widgets to the Rescue. School Library Journal, 54(2), 41-43.

 

Greenhow, C. (2009). Tapping the Wealth of Social Networks for Professional Development. Learning & Leading With Technology, 36(8), 10-11.