Social network

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organisations) called "nodes," which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

In relation to technology, fairly recently social networking has become an integral part of society, specifically for teenagers and young adults. Simmons (2008) finds that social networking can have both positive and negative aspects. For example, Simmons (2008) suggests that if social networking is used by a student to discuss class matters then that can only be a good thing. However she (2008) finds that sometimes students abuse the trust of autonomy they have been given surrounding their learning and reports instances when students have started to chat to friends on Facebook.

However some education providers have decided to incorporate sites such as Facebook and Bebo for instance into their teaching and learning in order to maintain the students’ interest and work ethic. BHASVIC (Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College) (2009) successfully implemented the use of social networking sites to help students prepare for examinations and consolidate their learning through a revision section which was devised by their teacher on Facebook called GetRevising.

Cookson (2009 ) found that the students were immediately more interested in using social networking sites to plan their revision as opposed to traditional pen and paper methods. He (2009 ) also believed that the fact that students had contributed to the creation of the revision timetable meant that they had ownership of them and subsequently would adhere to them more closely. Relating to Cookson’s findings, I decided to trial a real time discussion network called etherpad.com. I wanted to see how a group of level one students responded to having the freedom of a small private network. Unfortunately they took the opportunity to send obscenities to each other and deleted and intercepted each other’s text. Some of the aforementioned learners suggested that social networks are probably best for hours outside of college teaching hours, rather than them being used as learning resources. This certainly suggests success of this type of resource is indicative to the maturity of the learners using them.

References

Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College (2009) Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College: Using Social Networking to get Revising [Online]. Available: http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/Programmes/page.aspx?o=239196 [ 5 January 2010]

Cookson, M (2009) Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College: Using Social Networking to get Revising [Online]. Available: http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/Programmes/page.aspx?o=239196

[5 January 2010]

Simmons, R (2008) Responses to Online debate: the pros and cons of social networking in education .[Online]. Available: http://educationpr.org/2008/01/16/online-debate-the-pros-and-cons-of-social-networking-in-education/ [5 January 2010 ]