Social Networking and Distance Education: A Taxonomy

Michael Simonson

Program Professor

Instructional Technology and Distance Education

Nova Southeastern University

North Miami Beach, Florida

Web 2.0

www.nova.edu/~simsmich

Slide: 5

3Di Web 2.0

Web 2.0 and the 3D internet usher in the age of the Free Range Learner

Web 1.0

Access ParticipateValueProposition

PosterChildren

Find Share Collaborate Co-Create

LearningProgression

Dr. Tony O’DriscollNorth Carolina State University

Gartner

Learning About Social Networking: A Taxonomy

Level 1: Learning about social networks – definitions, history, background, and examples.

Level 2: Designing for social networks – profiling, blogging, wiki-ing, and friending.

Level 3: Studying social networks – ethics, uses, mis-uses, policing, supporting.

Level 4: Learning from and with social networks – social networks for teaching and learning, science, research, and theory building.

Judith Tabron, Director of Faculty Computing Services, Hofstra University

The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 28, 2008

“Our students live online. The fall in love, they shop, they order pizza on the web. Their iPods, TV’s and Xboxes are sophisticated technologies. They instant-message their blogs from their cellphones, and they can’t picture a college having a place in any of this, because we haven’t show them that we can.”

“It will be a dismal future if the only thing our graduates cannot do online is learn.”

Learning Communities: Social Networking in Distance Education?