Social Networking: At Home, In The Classroom, and Around the World
General Information
This website was created by: Amy Glenn, Hilary Gray, Rosemarie Lerma, Aaron Lewicki,Vontay Marshall, and Elaine Wachira for EPS 415, HRE section at the University of Illinois - Professor Nick Burbules and co-instructor Adrienne Pickett.
Welcome to our website! On this site, we will be discussing various Social Networking Sites ("SNS") that are popular today, both in the United States and around the world, and their effects on education. Social Networking Sites are websites which allow users to connect with others to exchange news, information, photos, videos, etc. These pages contain information about these sites, possible positives and negatives, examples of the sites, and the references used to create the site. To contact the creators, please click the "Contact Us" tab in the sidebar on the left.
Welcome to our website! On this site, we will be discussing various Social Networking Sites ("SNS") that are popular today, both in the United States and around the world, and their effects on education. Social Networking Sites are websites which allow users to connect with others to exchange news, information, photos, videos, etc. These pages contain information about these sites, possible positives and negatives, examples of the sites, and the references used to create the site. To contact the creators, please click the "Contact Us" tab in the sidebar on the left.
About Social Networking Sites
Social networking is not a term that was invented within the past decade; in fact, the ability to socially network with others has been around for centuries and has been examined and re-examined by many psychologists since the early 1800’s. It was not until the early 1930s, a psychologist by the name of Dr. Jacob Levi Moreno became interested in social ties between individuals so he introduced the term “Sociogram” to the world. A Sociogram is a visualization of individual points, or "nodes," connected by straight lines that help people understand the social link they have in common with each other (Card, 1999). Moreno later conducted the first formal attempt to map out the relationships within a group of people on paper and this became the first network analytic tool used to link individuals together based on choices or preferences (Wasserman, 1994).
Example of a visual representation of interpersonal relationships within a group using numbers:
Example of a visual representation of interpersonal relationships within a group using numbers:
http://www.marshal.co.uk/telematics/articles/ws2co_op/results.htm
Further examining the work of Moreno, anthropologist J. A. Barnes is credited coining the term “social network” in 1954, as a social structure made of nodes(individuals or Groups) connected based on various social interdependency known as tides which show the relationship between individuals or groups (Barnes).
Decades later with rapid advancements in technology, Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison linked the term “social network” with “technology”, and created the term “Social network site” to describe the new phenomenon of interacting by computers. After careful consideration, the term “Network” was changed to “Networking” to emphasis relationship initiation that occurred between more than one individual using this new form of technology and defined it as web-based service that allowed individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system and hence the term “Social Networking Site” was introduced (Boyd, Ellison 2007). On this website, “Social Networking Sites” will be referred to as “SNS.”
SNS make invisible social networks visible. According to Boyd and Ellison, in order to label a site a SNS three common elements must exist. The first is a member profile or often referred to as a Web page; Secondly, the ability to add members to a contact list based on several different criteria; Third, a way to have supported interaction between members on the contact list (Boyd, Ellis 2007). SNS also allow users to upload personal profiles, photos, music and blogs as a form or individual representation has become a buzz phrase of the Web 2.0 era (Brown, 2009).
Today social networks help users to discover, extend and manage both their professional and personal social experiences. There are now SNS for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry and group that you could imagine. Individuals around the world are slowly embracing the different forms of social networking as they continue to grow at an exponential rate with some user bases larger than the population of a country.
The most popular are web based, commercial and those not purposely created for educational use. This includes sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and LinkedIn. The use of SNS is becoming more prevalent in the work place with programs like Microsoft’s Share Point, which is designed to strictly meet corporate needs (Hegna, Johnson). Educational sites are also growing and commonly used by educators for both professional development and long distant teaching tools such as Moodle, Educational wikis.
Communication with peer group members seems to be the most important use of SNS in the United States (Barker, 2009). The idea that people wanted to connect with their friends via the Internet, the first SNS, Classmates.com launched in 1995 and was considered the first site to offer social networking. The concept behind the site was to connect individuals based on high school or college affiliation (Kay, 2007). SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997, and is considered the first recognizable SNS that allows users to create profiles, list their friends and the added bonus, subscribers were able to follow their friends via the internet. The reason that social networking websites work so well is that, like their inception, they start off small and then grow exponentially.
Below is a video called "Social Networking in Plain English," which gives further information about how SNS work and why they are so popular.
Further examining the work of Moreno, anthropologist J. A. Barnes is credited coining the term “social network” in 1954, as a social structure made of nodes(individuals or Groups) connected based on various social interdependency known as tides which show the relationship between individuals or groups (Barnes).
Decades later with rapid advancements in technology, Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison linked the term “social network” with “technology”, and created the term “Social network site” to describe the new phenomenon of interacting by computers. After careful consideration, the term “Network” was changed to “Networking” to emphasis relationship initiation that occurred between more than one individual using this new form of technology and defined it as web-based service that allowed individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system and hence the term “Social Networking Site” was introduced (Boyd, Ellison 2007). On this website, “Social Networking Sites” will be referred to as “SNS.”
SNS make invisible social networks visible. According to Boyd and Ellison, in order to label a site a SNS three common elements must exist. The first is a member profile or often referred to as a Web page; Secondly, the ability to add members to a contact list based on several different criteria; Third, a way to have supported interaction between members on the contact list (Boyd, Ellis 2007). SNS also allow users to upload personal profiles, photos, music and blogs as a form or individual representation has become a buzz phrase of the Web 2.0 era (Brown, 2009).
Today social networks help users to discover, extend and manage both their professional and personal social experiences. There are now SNS for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry and group that you could imagine. Individuals around the world are slowly embracing the different forms of social networking as they continue to grow at an exponential rate with some user bases larger than the population of a country.
The most popular are web based, commercial and those not purposely created for educational use. This includes sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and LinkedIn. The use of SNS is becoming more prevalent in the work place with programs like Microsoft’s Share Point, which is designed to strictly meet corporate needs (Hegna, Johnson). Educational sites are also growing and commonly used by educators for both professional development and long distant teaching tools such as Moodle, Educational wikis.
Communication with peer group members seems to be the most important use of SNS in the United States (Barker, 2009). The idea that people wanted to connect with their friends via the Internet, the first SNS, Classmates.com launched in 1995 and was considered the first site to offer social networking. The concept behind the site was to connect individuals based on high school or college affiliation (Kay, 2007). SixDegrees.com, launched in 1997, and is considered the first recognizable SNS that allows users to create profiles, list their friends and the added bonus, subscribers were able to follow their friends via the internet. The reason that social networking websites work so well is that, like their inception, they start off small and then grow exponentially.
Below is a video called "Social Networking in Plain English," which gives further information about how SNS work and why they are so popular.
