E-learning & Social Networking 1.1

While technology evolves it's more and more common to use e-learning tools and social networking sites in school and university as if they were books. Many suggest this is not the way to go, that students will now learn properly and will forget easily. But many others say "if you can't fight them, join them!". And so they did!


What these social networking sites have in common is that they create a virtual community where each individual has a profile (with more or less information about the person, pictures and it can be visited directly). There's commonly a list of "friends" that people can see (traversable and publicly articulated social network) and semi-persistent public comments, usually in a reversed chronological order.


The good thing about these networks is that actively connect users with each other, who would otherwise passively absorb content. Also, information is continuously renewed and (hopefully) improved. In fact, as it happens with Wikipedia and many others:


"(...) users pursuing their own selfish interest build collective value as an automatic by-product."


It is therefore important to understand how these networks function, how they are built and how they are regulated.

Twitter, you're so new to me!

I've recently started to use Twitter because of the new course I'm doing (Social Software & Web 2.0). At first I thought Twitter was a bit useless: I mean, I can only write 140 characters? Are you kidding me?
But after trying it for a while I'm starting to get it. You don't want to exhaust people who follow you with 3-page speeches and you most certainly will not get more followers if you come out as a boring lecturer.
Twitter is quite smart in that sense because you get the opportunity to catch someone's eye in a short sentence and once they're caught you'll get your follower wanting more.


Twitter allows you to follow other users, see who they are following and see and follow other users' list about a certain subject. Once you follow a certain user and tweet about a certain subject, most likely that user will follow you back if they're interested in what you're tweeting about. You will easily build a "community" of people interested in that subject and it will be easier to ask and answer questions about it. Here you can read a lit bit more about it.


I can see how this can be useful when it comes to learning. You have a question, you tweet it and you get an answer from another person in that "community". And if you use the hash-tags it becomes even easier to see who is saying what about what.


Aside from that, even an international student or someone doing the course online will feel welcomed. Short posts will keep everyone up to date and remind people about deadlines and creating a sense of community that a conventional forum cannot give. These and other virtues are the reason why Twitter is used in The School of Modern Languages.


Of course this implies everyone being online all the time. But then again, who doesn't check their e-mail at least 5 times a day nowadays? And how many don't have internet on their mobiles phones?


Don't forget to give a look at my Twitter page by the way: https://twitter.com/#!/anatneve.