Social+Networking

You have a generation faced with a society with fundamentally different properties thanks to the Internet. We can turn our backs and say, ‘This is bad,’ or, ‘We don’t want a world like this.’ It’s not going away. So instead of saying that this is terrible, instead of saying, ‘Stop MySpace; stop Facebook; stop the Internet,’ it’s a question for us of how we teach ourselves and our children to live in a society where these properties are fundamentally a way of life. This is public life today. - Danah Boyd, Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School Read her blog post on [|The Economist Debate on Social "Networking"]

Nancy Willard's blog post [|Web 2.0--not Social Networking] "I am thinking that one of the problems is the terminology we are using. Whenever we say “social networking in schools” people will invariably think that we mean that we want students to be able to use MySpace and Facebook at school. The vast majority of us recognize that this approach will likely not fly because these sites are not educational...So what I am thinking is that we may have a terminology problem - that is pretty easily fixed. The term “social networking” has all sorts of negative baggage - much of this grounded in irresponsible fear-mongering, but negative baggage none the less."

C[|reating & Connecting//Research and Guidelines on Online Social--and Educational--Networking] From the National School Boards Association Excellent resource on understanding how today's youth use Web 2.0 tools as well as social networking.

[|From MySpace to MyJob: Online interaction Prepares Students for Employment] From Edutopia

[|How To: Use Social-Networking Technology for Learning] Social-networking tools aren't just for flirting on MySpace. The evolving world of Internet communication -- blogs, podcasts, tags, file swapping -- offers students radically new ways to research, create, and learn. But, too often, schools use computers as little more than glorified workbooks, and that's criminal, says Chris Lehmann, principal of Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy. He explains why teachers should embrace networking and how they can use it to improve education. From Eduotopia

[|My School, Meet MySpace: Social Networking at School] Months before the newly hired teachers at Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA) started their jobs, they began the consuming work of creating the high school of their dreams -- without meeting face to face. They articulated a vision, planned curriculum, designed assessment rubrics, debated discipline policies, and even hammered out daily schedules using the sort of networking tools -- messaging, file swapping, idea sharing, and blogging -- kids love on sites such as MySpace. From Edutopia

[|Social Networking: TheirSpace] PREDICTION: Increasing access to digital content will lead to exponential growth in school-based online communities on the MySpace/YouTube model. From Edutopia

This article addresses social networking--of which blogging is a part--and how a teacher embraced it. //[|Web Pulls World into Classroom]// From Christian Science Monitor

Social Networks in Education Wikispace Lists loads of social networks.