Will the Niche Social Networks Stick?

Ever since mass interest in social networks in North America began in MySpace, and since moved to Facebook, start-ups have tried to duplicate its success through specialized and newly feasible social networks. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare are several of the more popular ones. As much as these sites are discussed in the media as being popular I really believe that it’s mostly hype, and that most of these networks will never become as big as their developers or the experts speculate.

People thought that when the cell phone came out that we would be too much in contact with people to have things to talk about all the time. They had no idea how much that would change with the internet and its many social networks encompassing all different aspects of our life from what we buy to where we drink coffee. These sites are just creating new places to talk about and share things that we already do through a number of channels. We don’t need a specialized network to discuss every individual topic and issue. Having them all discussed in one sphere like Facebook is what allows ideas to jump between the issues and people to create solutions that people wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Micro-blogging sites, like Twitter, and location-based networking sites, like Foursquare, each have their own interesting ability that make them useful, but they don’t really work for regular people whose lives are too boring to hear every detail about. I think that as Facebook evolves to encompass these specialized utilities, which it is already doing, I think that it will eventually become basically the only social network that people belong to. Right now Facebook offers exactly what Twitter does (Tweets=Status Updates). I just think people are into Twitter because it’s ‘in’ right now, but most will grow tired of having to toggle between multiple networks and will want to be able to access it all through one single channel.

As an aside though I do think that there will always be different social networks based on language and a ‘business’ network like LinkedIn, as it’s purpose is business-related and not to socialize with friends.

Steeves

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Connectivism

Where does the increasingly autonomous learning environment and new social media tools lead to though? Some may not think there will ever be an end to it, but as of now the end is connectivism, ‘a learning theory for the digital age’. George Seimens (2005) developed connectivism as a way to cope with a number of significant trends in learning:

• “The shrinking half-life of knowledge … (which) is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete.”
• “Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. “
• “Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.”
• “Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.”
• “Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.”

The theory of connectivism is based on several principals:

• “Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.”

“John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. The central premise is that connections created with unusual nodes supports and intensifies existing large effort activities. Brown provides the example of a Maricopa County Community College system project that links senior citizens with elementary school students in a mentor program. The children “listen to these “grandparents” better than they do their own parents, the mentoring really helps the teachers…the small efforts of the many- the seniors – complement the large efforts of the few – the teachers.” (2002). This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.”

I believe that this is the way of the future and that in order to truly keep up with new information in certain fields, like social media, you can’t learn from a textbook, because the information written in the textbook nine months before your class began is obsolete by the time you begin reading it. Subscribing to constantly updating web publication is the only way to stay on top of the spread of new information that will eventually help you with your future career.

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iPhone Apps for the Classroom

Smartphone applications are opening up an entire new world for institutions to interact with their constituents.  Stanford University has “released a free iPhone application called iStandard that allows students to register for classes, look up campus maps and be able to view the location of their friends on a map – instant messaging them if need be … Other schools have also introduced similar applications (Duke University, Georgia Tech, U Cal at San Diego, etc.) (Lavrusik, 2009).

Abilene Christian University (ACU) has taken the use of smart phones to the next level by issuing iPhones or iPod Touches to all of its full-time freshmen students in order to stay connected to their school, courses, professors, and fellow students. Freshmen can use their iPhones or iPod Touches to receive homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, check their meal and account balances, and watch podcasts of their professor’s lectures.

Access to the iPhones and their prevalence on campus enables students to work with their professors on developing applications for the iPhone, which has become a burgeoning market in the social media sphere. Dr. Scott Perkins (2009) discovered “that pre-class podcasts and autonomous student review of information can effectively replace laboratory-based lectures with absolutely no decrease in student performance. The majority of students in specific courses where mobile devices have been routinely used rate themselves as having improved their academic performance (grades and organization) and engagement (active learning, contact with professors and teaching assistants, involvement and attention).”

Cynthia Powell, instructor of chemistry and biochemistry at ACU, concurred with Dr. Perkins in stating that, “as scientists, our students need to be learning how to collect and gather data on their own, and this is an important way that we can help our students on this path toward independence.” What we want to do with this program,” Dr. William Rankin, Associate Professor of English and Director of Educational Innovation, said, “is tap into each student’s innate abilities. We want to transform the shape of the classroom from that factory model, where everybody sits in ranks, and observes an consumes, to a model of engagement, where each student becomes a resource in the class.”

The above post is an excerpt from a paper about social media use in schools I’m writing for my Professional Report Writing class; in case you couldn’t tell.

Steeves

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Foursquare at the University of the Fraser Valley

I recently did a pilot study of how well the location-based social networking tool Foursquare would work at UFV. I spoke to a number of students about it and got them into trying it out while on campus. The results unfortunatley were lackluster. One of the reasons was that not a single person had heard of Foursquare of location-based social networking. Many others either found no reason to be doing it without some kind of incentive or saw it as being too intrusive into their personal lives. 

I saw numerous benefits from having an active Foursquare network at UFV like they do at UNC Charlotte and Harvard in the U.S. By having major congregation areas around campus as venues on the FourSquare network, students can check-in at a venue on the network when they are present in it, allowing their friends and classmates to see where they are in real-time, and be able to visit them. By seeing when their friends are on campus during the week, students could setup carpools with one another, it can facilitate team collaboration in group projects, which can be very difficult to coordinate, and even allow for easy access to large groups of students by their peers for activities such as selling used books or finding survey participants. This would even allow administration to watch trends in student activity in order to better understand the student body and what their needs are.

Below are my reccomendations:

As of March 2010, I must be blunt in saying that a full-scale operation like this in the present will most likely be futile and a waste of valuable resources. The concept is too new for the university to be going at it alone in a sense. A Downtown Vancouver campus, which is currently a great Foursquare hub with many participating businesses, would be a perfect place to implement it, unfortunately, our Abbotsford campus is not.

In the near future though, especially if UFV implements the Schools on Facebook application, this will be a viable option that the student body will be open to. Students need to see that the utility of the service will outweigh their privacy concerns, much like they already have with Facebook and online retailers like Amazon. Getting faculty and staff on-board would be the most credible source for getting students interested in location-based social networking, as well as the unlimited potential that the entire social media sphere holds itself. It won’t be long before other B.C. universities tap into Foursquare, and to be thought of as a forward-thinking school it would be better for UFV to be an early adopter than a laggard.

Steeves

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