Journal Article #7 - Beyond Social Networking

Reynard, R. (2009). Beyond social networking: building toward learning communities. The Journal, July, Retrieved August 1, 2009, from http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/07/15/Beyond-Social-Networking-Building-Toward-Learning-Communities.aspx?Page=1

This article suggests that the use of social networking tools in teaching and learning is only the beginning of a longer and more complex process of socially constructed learning and ultimately collaboration and knowledge building. Social networking provides new ways to connect and share information and create networks of immediately, but it does not necessarily lead to learning communities or the sharing of ideas. An active learning community involves effective relationships, idea exchange and knowledge construction. The instructor must support the learning communities and sharing of ideas to engage students beyond social networking to the social construction of knowledge. The teacher can do so by: maintaining a constant presence; maximizing variety in how information is processed and applied by using a variety of supporting tools, such as a blog and a wiki; creating workable focus areas by synthesizing broadly scoped ideas to ensure that ideas are managed and grown; providing a customized approach to each student so every student feels connected to the subject at hand and by integrating the new ideas students offer so they understand their participation in the learning community.

With expert intervention by the teacher, social networking tools are forums for encouraging student confidence and learner autonomy and developing collaborative learning skills. Our goal as educators should be to encourage children to develop the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes, pool knowledge and compare notes with others to develop a collective intelligence and have the ability to travel across diverse communities.

What is a good way to engage students by using a social networking site? Provide students with a problem to solve or information to research and discuss how using delicious.com, a social bookmarking site would be beneficial to use. Have the students sign up for a delicious account and complete the research and reflect on how delicious helped them find the research.

How can instructors encourage students to become learning community participants using social networking? Create a class project in which each student plays a role in finding out one piece of information on a broader subject. The student would share their information to the class by using the social networking site. After every student has contributed, the instructor would be able to present the subject and recap what each student’s contribution was to the overall subject matter, thus each student would see their contribution to the final presentation as valuable.