Social networking and its impact on education and corporate learning

24 Aug 2007

Working with education.org.au and education.AU we were privileged to bring Danah Boyd over from the US to talk about her research into online Social Networking. Danah highlighted features these networks have in common:

  • Profile
  • Friends
  • Conversations

and truisms that govern them...

  • You won’t socialise with those that have power over you
  • You will recreate the networks that you have already

Is social networking great for learning? Not necessarily, communities are mostly established through trivial activities of likeminded individuals, often simply catching up by posting and browsing photo's, blogs and videos. However, members of project teams, syndicate groups and classes are all established with the binding purpose of learning - and can use the same tools employed in social networks to share subject specific knowledge that would normally be used to present personal information. Despite communities of practice being so different from social communities, our experiences show we can use the tools that have so quickly added to the ways social interactions are taking place to enhance opportunities for learning.

Thanks to education.org.au, MMV and elearningorg.au for the opportunity to hear Danah's stimulating presentation .