Using a social networking site for experiential learning: Appropriating, lurking, modeling and community building.

This article pontificates on the use of SNS for the classroom or learning environment. Social networking sites have an ever growing sense of community and emphasis for learning. Due to the nil to nothing cost of being a member in most SNS domains, it could reasoned that it is more cost effective by hosting classrooms in virtual environments. Authors Arnold and Paulus create a great case study about interactions.

My thoughts: The use of SNS for classroom instruction will only grow. I rationalize this as anytime a member in facebook post or comments to something it is diplayed on their network friend’s wall.  Even if the friends are not enrolled in that virtual class, even a casual glance at a class comment that a friend posts demonstrates a precedent about the normality of classrooms in SNS. I think the major social networks and search engine Google will catch on and eventually create their own socio-learning versions of Blackboard software to sway teacher’s opinions about social networking and education.  Some court issues have been filed since 2000 about Blackboards patents. More specifically patent issues have occurred with Blackboard filing suit against other software education systems Sakai, Atutor, and Desire2Learn.