Social Networking
Social Networking tools are varied and readily available for all of us to use. I have a Facebook account and I try to connect to a network of educators with this website and blog as well as twitter and my TechPLC Delicious (social bookmarking) account; my list will continue to grow because I firmly believe it to be a great benefit to me. I also network by connecting with educators using Google Reader to subscribe to blogs and content that I want delivered to me. Social networking may have negative connotations but can also be a very valuable tool and more and more studies are coming out that suggest that it does improve student learning. It is important that the adults in our students lives understand the value and the dangers of social networking and provide leadership and guidance to teach students how to navigate this potentially turbulent yet exciting path.
Social network From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties (also called edges, links, or connections). Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. In its simplest form, a social network is a map of specified ties, such as friendship, between the nodes being studied. The nodes to which an individual is thus connected are the social contacts of that individual. The network can also be used to measure social capital – the value that an individual gets from the social network. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines. |
A Parents Guide to Facebook by Anne Collier and Larry Magid Co-Directors, ConnectSafely.org, this is a great resource and might help you to understand privacy settings that you may want to use on your own facebook account.
|