Social Networking

On December 5th, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) set 10 red balloons in various locations around the US. Teams proceeded to use social networks (primarily Twitter) to pass along information on where the balloons were moored. DARPA planned to test out how accurately social networks could pass along information.

Responses were originally to be accepted until December 14th. How well do social networks pass along information? Well enough that a team from MIT determined the locations of all 10 balloons by Saturday afternoon.

Impressive!

For months the headlines have read variations on a theme... "is your child safe on Facebook?" Now Facebook is answering with the "Panic Button," in the UK. Soon there will be a way for children and parents in Great Britain to instantly report online abuse and illicit activity directly to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre. Can the US be far behind?

A few months ago, our Design Director, Alissa, led the team in a brainstorming activity. Although she announced the topic (creating a lesson planner), we were given instructions not to focus on that as our jumping off point. Instead, for our jumping off point, each group of two to three people chose a random word from the dictionary.*

How is Twitter being used outside of the education? Mashable offers a "Top 10 Most Extraordinary Tweets" which covers everything from reporting on national disasters in real time, to marriage proposals, to organizing charity events.

Some of my favorite (and some of my least favorite) Twitter experiences (not in the Top Ten list) include:

What are the pros and cons of new technology and social networking in the educational sphere?

Pros:
Online Universities are now offering classes and all materials through facebook, which makes them available to students in all countries, even those without the funding to otherwise receive an education.

Teachers are offering extra help and are more available to their students via Facebook and MySpace.

President Obama has weighed in on social networking!  

According to Reuters, Obama was quoted as saying "I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life... And when you're young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. And I've been hearing a lot about young people who -- you know, they're posting stuff on Facebook, and then

263,000,000 people are on MySpace.  Traffic on Twitter has increased by 600% in the past year.  A new movie about the creation of Facebook, entitled The Social Network, is slated to come out in 2010.  How do you guage the most significant, important, or popular social networking site?

We already knew that social networking, from Twitter to Facebook to Youtube to Myspace and all the other online communities are a great way for businesses and individuals to connect.  Nate, one of our developers, recently pointed me toward our local police's Twitter account, to help me recover my stolen bike.