As things currently stand, social networking is only having any impact on student life when it is used informally – for peer communication and support. Students have fed back that they don’t want social networking sites to be used for education – because they like its informal, social nature and see this as a distinct ‘zone’, separate from their studies.
But my view is that this is just because the tools for social networking are still evolving. Facebook is largely social in nature, but perhaps Elgg, which is more targeted at learning communities, could work better for education. Over time, we will be able to identify more clearly the aspects of social networking sites that could be utilized more in education. For example, Facebook has the ‘bookshelf’ app that aggregates user feedback on different books and then recommends similar books for people to read based on correlations in their preferences. This app could be used for reading lists for university students.
[H800 Week 18]
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