The Beauty of Social Networking
I have really enjoyed reading about social networks this week. I am quite amazed and impressed by the magnitude and popularity of these social networks. My husband is the director of social networking where I work, so I am constantly bombarded (in a good way) with a variety of aspects of social networking. I will admit that a few years ago I really didn’t think I wanted or needed a Facebook account. Then one day my boss, Paul Allen, met with our company and encouraged everyone to get a Facebook account (so I did to meet a requirement from my boss.) Now, I am very happy that I did. I think we all generally feel some sort of need to connect with other people, whether that be our friends or family members. We also like to share what’s going on in our lives, and find out what’s happening in the lives of other people. Social networks are a great way to be an active participant in those areas.
As per social networks in education, I’m still trying to figure out there place, and I think a lot of other people are as well. I know that some classes at BYU receive their announcements through Facebook. Other faculty members have set up groups for their students to have a space to be able to discuss their thoughts on the class and assignments. Some faculty members have even become friends with their students, and some students have invited their professors to be their friends on Facebook. Still, I don’t feel like we have even begun to use social networks for educational purposes.
>And speaking of being able to communicate with others through social networks, I just went to my Facebook account and found a friend request from a lady. She read one of my articles that I wrote for our company newsletter and wanted to see if she could get permission to distribute it to her members. Awesome! Who would have thought we would have connected on Facebook? She could have responded to my email in the newsletter, but she chose Facebook as the venue to communicate.
We are now friends on Facebook.
Now on to social applications. There are thousands of applications on Facebook…so many that I would not have time to review them all, nor add them all. I think some of the applications are excellent, and some definitely need some work. Now, if I can brag for a moment, my husband’s application, We’re Related is currently the number 8 application on Facebook for the most active users! Yes, and it is about to reach 10 million users. 10 million users! Oh, how I love technology, and the virality of these applications. I haven’t added a lot of applications to my Facebook page, not because I don’t like them, but because they require time, and I have been pretty focused on some other things lately. I did appreciate the assignment from Dr. Wiley to look at some of the applications. I downloaded the application that lets you select where you have been. I am still working on that fun, but so far it has been fun. And what is the purpose of all of these applications? I guess they have different purposes, some are just for fun, others are to get you thinking, others are to connect you to your friends and family…and the list goes on and on and on. I typed in the word “education” to see how many applications were related to education. There were 164 results for “education.” Some encouraged others to find jobs in the field of education. Another one was a language challenge. Another application was to support literacy. Hmm. There are some great educational applications…and I’m sure there will be even better ones in the future.
When I looked at blogs that discussed education and social networks, I found a great blog on social networking in higher education. Now, I am a little biased to this blog because it focuses on how social networks are impacting individuals at Penn State. I almost went to Penn State for my doctorate, so I enjoy reading about things that are happening there. The author discusses how Twitter is changing the culture of Penn State. Here are a few of his thoughts:
“At Penn State World Campus we’re beginning to take advantage of the opportunities with tools like twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Second Life in the hopes of building a true, active community of faculty, staff and learners. I’ll be talking about these tools in detail in future posts, but for today we’ll concentrate on twitter. If you’re tired of hearing about twitter, just give me five minutes of your time and let me tell you how twitter has really, truly, changed things at Penn State….At Penn State, twitter has changed the culture on campus and has given us ways to connect across our university that we couldn’t have imagined. We’ve used twitter to ask for help, work on projects, discuss topics during conferences, schedule impromptu lunches, and offer things for sale. We’ve planned meetings, found opportunities to collaborate and have become a much more connected, intelligent, communicative group that now includes people from several Penn State campuses, departments and academic colleges. We are IT professionals, professors, advisers, learning designers, and students. We have used twitter to build a community that now thrives at Penn State.”
This is awesome, and if social networks are changing Penn State, they are probably changing another university or college near you!