Networked: The New Social Operating System

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of “networked individualism” liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks. Rainie and Wellman outline the “triple revolution” that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals

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Designing for learning: Online social networks as a classroom environment

This paper deploys notions of emergence, connections, and designs for learning to conceptualize high school students’ interactions when using online social media as a learning environment. It makes links to chaos and complexity theories and to fractal patterns as it reports on a part of the first author’s action research study, conducted while she was a teacher working in an Australian public high school and completing her PhD. The study investigates the use of a Ning online social network as a learning environment shared by seven classes, and it examines students’ reactions and online activity while using a range of social media and Web 2.0 tools.

The authors use Graham Nuthall’s (2007) “lens on learning” to explore the social processes and culture of this shared online classroom. The paper uses his extensive body of research and analyses of classroom learning processes to conceptualize and analyze data throughout the action research cycle. It discusses the pedagogical implications that arise from the use of social media and, in so doing, challenges traditional models of teaching and learning.

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A pedagogy of abundance or a pedagogy to support human beings? Participant support on massive open online courses

This paper examines how emergent technologies could influence the design of learning environments. It will pay particular attention to the roles of educators and learners in creating networked learning experiences on massive open online courses MOOCs.

The research shows that it is possible to move from a pedagogy of abundance to a pedagogy that supports human beings in their learning through the active creation of resources and learning places by both learners and course facilitators. This pedagogy is based on the building of connections, collaborations, and the exchange of resources between people, the building of a community of learners, and the harnessing of information flows on networks. This resonates with the notion of emergent learning as learning in which actors and system co-evolve within a MOOC and where the level of presence of actors on the MOOC influences learning outcomes.

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Emergent Learning and Learning Ecologies in Web 2.0

In this paper we argue that it might be useful for educational institutions to actively explore alternative frameworks such as complexity theory, communities of practice, connectivism, and the underlying threads of  emergent learning to inform their planning and strategy. We will attempt to bring together elements of all these  areas of research and practice  to develop a framework for emergent learning that can be applied across education, work, and social networking, with their increasingly blurred boundaries.

We explore the following:

• What are the conditions that enable emergent, self-organised learning to occur and to flourish?
• What mechanisms of validation are effective, can emergent learning networks be self-correcting, and if so, how?
• Is it possible to link, or even integrate, emergent and prescribed learning, and if so, how?

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The Benefits of Social Networking Services

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Technology has significantly changed the way in which young people interact with one another and the world around them. The majority of young Australians use the internet or a mobile phone to source information, engage and construct and maintain social networks. Technologies have dramatically transformed young people‟s relationships with one another, their families and communities. Young people‟s online behaviour is often not well understood resulting in a „digital disconnect‟ between young people‟s use of technology and the knowledge and concerns that parents, professionals and community members share about this use.

This report produced by the Cooperative Research Centre for Young People, Technology and Wellbeing presents research conducted by the Inspire Foundation, University of Western Sydney and Murdoch University. It summarises the current evidence relating to the impact of Social Networking Services in the context of young people‟s everyday lives.  This seminal report provides a critical evidence base for youth based organisations looking to incorporate social networking into their programs. Additionally it provides a summary of essential research which will provide the foundations for educational resources for parents, professionals and young people.