After reading the Wikipedia reference to social network services, I discovered that I started social networking when I joined Classmates.com in the late ‘90’s. The interface as I remember was relatively simple. I joined as a member and created a profile with my high school name, college name and years of graduation and then searched for fellow classmates by the same categories. The website allowed me to send an email through the site to classmates of my choice. It would be years later that I joined MySpace to keep in touch with my group of friends, send them party invitations, make plans with them for the weekend and be reminded to wish them a Happy Birthday. Who would have guessed how much social networks have changed the way we communicate and provided us with additional opportunities to learn and network?

Today, I’ve created a diverse social network via MySpace, Facebook, Linked In, Wikispaces, iGoogle and Twitter, among others. I keep a blog and post photos to Flickr and Mobileme galleries. I saw little value in social networks beyond keeping in touch with friends and networking through Linked In until recently. I continue to read in trade journals about the importance of using Web 2.0 and social networks as tools to enrich the learning experience.

Where do I go from here?  I think it’s very important as an Instructional Designer to continue to learn and keep up with industry trends and new technologies.  Social networking affords us that opportunity.  The E-learning Guild and Work Literacy are currently sponsoring an online conference called Work Literacy: Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals.  This is a great example of how we can use social networking to increase our knowledge in the field.  It’s no mistake that they’re using Ning, a Web 2.0 tool to present this conference.

Blogging is another excellent use of a social network to increase our learning and to share what we know with others.  As a new blogger, I look forward to sharing my ideas with other learning professionals.  I hope that other new instructional designers will relate to my successes and challenges and I look forward to feedback and advice from those seasoned in the field.

Lastly, I want to explore the use of Ning to create my own social network.  When I’m not taking class, I enjoy acting in community theater productions.  Recently, I’ve seen extensive use of Facebook in the theater community to post auditions and advertise upcoming productions.  I envision a social network, specifically for those interested in theater, where they can do this and more.  The network would have discussion boards related to audition tips, where to take private dance or voice lessons and reviews of local and Broadway productions.  The network is already established and active, the challenge is to encourage the potential members to use the site.

The more we use these tools, the better prepared we’ll be to understand how to apply them to enrich our learner’s experiences.  I look forward to the endless possibilities that Web 2.0 and social networks offer and I look forward to your shared experiences on this journey.

In the reading, Solomon and Schrum state “Web 2.0 signals a transition from isolation to interconnectedness.”  They go on to say that these new tools allow multiple learners to participate and collaborate rather than work alone.  As an instructional designer in a corporate setting, collaboration is a major focus.  While each person may have a specific role, most of us work on projects as a team.  We particpate on multiple teams with various functions.  However, when I think back to how I was taught in school, we had very few group projects and homework was done as an individual rather than a collaboration.  Incorporating Web 2.0 into the classroom will help foster these skills.  In the podcast, John Seely Brown, mentioned that we must focus more on a collaborative learning environment or context of learning rather than the content of learning.  Web 2.0 creates an architecture that allows for this focus of collaboration.

As educators, we need to embrace these tools by using them ourselves so that we can make decisions about how to apply them to the classroom so that we encourage collaboration and learning by discovery.  Our learners are already using these tools for many reasons.  We need to take advantage of their motivation to use these tools and get them excited about learning.  My question is this, with so many Web 2.0 applications available with similar functionality and more being developed each day:

1. Where do we start?
2. Do we choose tools currently being used by our learners?  Does it matter?
3. Will the tools we use be outdated in a few months or a year?

I’m looking forward to your thoughts and comments.