1. Social Networking as a Tool for
Teaching and Learning
A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or
social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social
network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/
her social links, and a variety of additional services.
Most social network services are web based (an application that is accessed via a
web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet.) and provides means for
users to interact over the internet (The Internet is a global system of interconnected
computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions
of users worldwide) , such as e-mail and instant messaging.
Although online community services are sometimes considered as a social
network service in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-
centered service whereas online community services are group-centered.
The main types of social networking services are those which contain category
places (such as former school-year or classmates), means to connect with friends (usually
with self-description pages) and a recommendation system linked to trust. Popular
methods now combine many of these, with Facebook, Bebo and Twitter widely used
worldwide; MySpace and LinkedIn being the most widely used in North America;[1]
Nexopia (mostly in Canada);[2] Bebo,[3] Hi5, StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), iWiW
(mostly in Hungary), Tuenti (mostly in Spain), Decayenne, Tagged, XING;[4], Badoo[5]
and Skyrock in parts of Europe;[6] Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America;
[7]
and Friendster, Mixi, Multiply, Orkut, Wretch, renren and Cyworld in Asia and the
Pacific Islands and Orkut and Facebook in India.
There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to
duplicate entries of friends and interests, but this has led to some concerns about privacy.
Although some of the largest social networks were founded on the notion of digitizing
real world connections, many other networks as seen in the List of social networking
websites focus on categories from books and music to non-profit business to motherhood
as ways to provide both services and community to individuals with shared interests.
Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to
send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140
characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's
subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their
circle of friends or, by default, allow open access
Twitter: Can We Use This As A Training Tool?
Twitter has made headlines in some amazing news stories; breaking the news of China’s
earthquake and helping a student get out of jail when he was arrested in Egypt for nothing
more than taking a photo. Both of these incidents speak to the growing popularity of
Twitter, but you may have the same questions I do: what is Twitter, who uses it, and can
be harnessed as a learning tool?

2. Twitter is a free social networking tool that keeps people connected with one another and
with sources of information. Twitter users submit updates, called “tweets”, about what
they are doing at the moment. These updates cannot exceed 140 characters.
Now how many folks are using Twitter? Twitter traffic is currently at 1.2 million users
per month. These users are mostly male, young, and profess to be heavy users, saying
they go on Twitter at least 6-8 times per month. See the demographic breakdown of
users below
Now, can Twitter be used for learning & development and if so how?
Here are some ways for you to consider:
Provide real time learning nuggets to either current or prospective students or
associates
When you look at the demographics of usage you see it is heavily weighted toward the
18-24 and 25-34 age ranges. These are the Millennials and Generation Xer’s that
universities are interested in recruiting as next generationstudents. It seems there can be a
host of applications for providing knowledge to follow-up a learning event.
Follow-up to asynchronous webcasts
Twitter is a great tool for communicating and asking questions on conference calls and
other types of static asynchronous conferencing as used in long distance learning. The
added benefit of this is that using Twitter to connect allows you to keep a record of
all the questions and comments, in a manner similar to a blog post.
Reinforcement or reminder on learning a new process or procedure in academia
In a saturated world of content where the shelf life of knowledge keeps growing shorter
and shorter, we are always looking for ways to reinforce new content. Twitter can
accomplish this because it allows you to see quick snippets of content.
However, it is also important to note that while real people write most tweets, some are
using the service for blasting marketing messages. In the later case, I believe users
quickly see through this and look for authentic content to help them be more successful
on their job.
So how are you using Twitter? Is it a viable tool for learning and
development? Share your thoughts with me.