Social Networking

Social Networking 
From Wikipedia: A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as message boards, e-mail, instant messaging, and live audio/video interaction.

One of the advantages of social networking for educators is that it allows us to connect with other educators and learners with common interests that we might never have the opportunity to meet in 'face to face' life. Our conversation with Sarah yesterday is an example of the kind of connection and relationship that can be formed with social networks.   Today's Tasks will involve exploring, experimenting, and experiencing some social networking activities.  There are too many sites listed below to visit during today's class. Just click on the ones that interest you, skip the ones that don't (or are loading too slowly). You can always come back to this page later and explore more. 
Here's a video that attempts to explain Social Networking
Common Craft: Social Networking in Plain English

  

Some social networks exist in a variety of  online venues and were formed independently in with specific purpose of forming a community.
 
Examples of these kinds of communities

The Webheads in Action -One of the most truly global groups I've ever participated in.  EFL Teachers from around the world who meet online weekly for a text chat, constantly experiment with new technology together and have periodic online workshops to facilitate learning together.  No money is involved.  Everything is done for the sake of learning. 

EdTechTalk - I was involved in forming this community.  It started as a regular webcast/podcast with and old friend.(first show here)  We'd talk about Educational Technology once a week and publish the audio.  We developed a community of listeners and eventually other people started publishing their own conversation.  

Other EFL or EdTech Related Communities

Social Network Platforms are websites (usually commercial websites) that aren't formed with any particular group in mind, allow users to form their own groups on that platform.
Popular examples of these are Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, hi5.com, & Linked in. You can see a more extensive list of social network platforms here.
Often sub-groups for within these platforms based on mutual interest.
Examples:

Examples of other social network platforms
from  Mashable's List of Social Networks

  • WizIQ - a live, interactive classrom interface.  People come and teach a variety of lessons, many of which people can participate in for free.
    Upcoming Classes ,  Recorded Sessions Examples: Basic English Phonics Lesson 2 The short 'a' Sound , IELTS Preparation - Vocabulary for IELTS , Basic English Third Class
     (first few minutes or recordings are usually not interesting, you can scroll along the bottom to move to a more interesting parts of the lesson)
  • Shelfari - Shelfari is a popular social networking service for book lovers.
  • Linkedin - LinkedIn is a professional social networking website for business users, one of the most popular such sites out there. Some aspects of it are free, but many are paid.
  • Geni.com - An exciting social networking site enabling members to create their family tree. Although it’s a relatively new site, it has grown tremendously fast, and has hundreds of thousands of users.
  • 43 Things - A tagging based social networking site. Users create accounts and list a number of goals or hopes and these are parsed based on similarity to goals of other users.
  • Facebook.com - Facebook is a social networking phenomenon connection people with their friends, family and other users with similar interests.
  • Half.com - A leading student market place for buying and selling textbooks at discounted prices.
  • MySpace.com - MySpace is an interactive social networking website consisting of personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos. It’s currently the biggest social networking site out there.
  • RateMyProfessor.com - RateMyProfessor connects students aspiring to study similar courses by assisting each other.
  • WAYN - A social networking website uniting world wide travelers.
Other EFL related site based social networks
  • Live Mocha
  • ESLCafe.com Forums
  • SharedTalk: A language exchange covering 113 languages from the makers of the popular RosettaStone language learning software.
  • xLingo: A language exchange that lets users create and share flashcards with each other.
  • iTalki: A language exchange with a Yahoo! Answers-style QnA site, and a wiki-based public knowledge base for 10 different languages.
  • Huitalk: Forums, articles, vocabulary lists, and a language exchange using Skype.
  • Interpals: A large language exchange from a popular penpal social network.
  • Mixxer: A free language exchange using Skype built by Dickinson College.
  • TT4You: A free global language exchange site.
  • Conversation Exchange: Text and voice chat, email, or face-to-face meetings can bet set up via Language Buddy to improve your conversational skills.
  • Lingozone: Build vocab skills by playing game of Word Ladder and Hangman, while making friends with whom to practice speaking.
  • Language Exchange Network: Think Craigslist for language learning; this site has super-simple language exchange classified listings.
  • MyLanguageExchange: One of the oldest online language exchanges (this site was a Yahoo! Internet Life pick in 2001), it claims over 1 million members speaking 115 different languages. 

Microblogging refers to using services like 

 

 

Resources

Tasks:  

  • Register at Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networking sites of interest.  (use a pseudonym [fake name] if you wish). Twitter Tips are here. Find interesting people to follow or 'friend'.  Try to use social networks to gather information and connections related to your areas of itnerest (or any other areas of interest). Post if you can, lurk if you prefer.  Post about your experiences in one of your daily reflections. 
  • Around 10am, I will put out an invitation to all of my social network friends to visit our class at http://efl537.com/chat  I'm not sure how many people will come, but hopefully at least a few people will stop by to chat. You can go to the chat room to say hello and talk about anything you like.  If they're able share audio or video, we can also set that up.