Although the real coming of social networks as we know it today consist of sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and even Twitter, education and social networking have gone a long way back, even before the new millennium.
When we think of education “in the past”, some people might conceive of the old one room school-house where children of all ages were taught by one teacher. In this case, although education through the use of social networks was not incorporated until very much later, what is called “Email Discussion Lists” was created in the 1970’s, in which email messages were able to be forwarded to a group of people, rather than just one person (Carvin 12). Not too long after, what was known as the “Big Sky Telegraph” was developed by Frank Odasz in 1988, which “[was] based at Western Montana College ... [and] [was] [a] distance learning network for rural educators ... [that] later incorporated bulletin board, collaborative workspaces, messaging, etc” (Carvin 16). The following link below is an article which goes into depth about the Big Sky Telegraph and its uses.
Eventually, social networks began to rise and find their place in the cyber-world, which allowed for more ease, flexibility, and a new way for education to be carried out, other than within the four walls of a classroom.
Written by Bertina Tan
Written by Bertina Tan
Education has indeed come a very long way in its use within social networking systems. Even during the time when the Big Sky Telegraph was launched and used, this was a big step towards increasing the amount of communication and information that could be passed and shared between people within the network. There is a site that briefly mentions "educational networking".
ReplyDeletehttp://www.educationalnetworking.com/