Social networks and

networking to support

eTwinning teachers

Riina VuorikariEuropean Schoolnet

riina.vuorikari@eun.org

Topics

•Social networks

• Participation - digital traces

• What are social networks?

• How do social networks look in eTwinning?

• What do social networks tell us?

• Social networks and eTwinning Ambassadors

by Stiphy

“Social”

makes

trails

visible.

.

and

shows

where to

do go

Social media

1. CREATE: Easy creation of content by everyone

• not only the ones who have the technical knowledge

• many tools available on the Web for anyone to use

for free

2. SHARE: Sharing of content is made MUCH easier,

thanks to handy ways of aggregating content

3. USE and REMIX of content is made easier thanks to easy and freely available software and licensing like Creative Commons

Video: Social mediahttp://dotsub.com/view/f810c5b5-b8dc-4946-a58f-5f7ce7ce4d44

Digital traces

• Making your profile available on

eTwinning

• Creating links to other people, projects,

tellinig that you like it, etc

• Creating links to what happen outside of

eTwinning platform:

• your pictures on Flickr, your blog posts,

your website, etc

Participation inequality

• J.Nilsen (2006) Participation inequality: Encouraging More Users to contribute

•

Power law of participation in

digital communities

Power law of participation for

eTwinning?

signing up in the portal

project participation and sharing experiences

eTwinning as a social network?

•What are the nodes and what are the

ties?

•For example:

• schools or teachers can be the nodes

• projects done together can be the ties

nodes

ties, something I declare explicitly

Social network

•..is a social structure made of nodesnodes and tiesties

• Nodes are actors in the network, e.g. teachers,

schools, countries

• Ties are relationships between actors, e.g.

friendship, professional tie, eTwinning projects

• Can be presented as a chart that shows the structure

of relations

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Social_network

nodes

ties

Visualising social ties and networks

• makes the ties between eTwinning members, projects and

schools visible

• helps finding interesting groups of like-minded people

and

projects

• but, also helps making the social network better

connected!

eTwinning as a social network

•Visualisation includes data from Summer

2008

• Number of teachers: 45 212

• Number of projects: 8 035 o

• Number of countries: 30

What type of information do social

networks reveal?

tightly connected nodes in the central

isolated groups interacting mostly amongst themselves

“singletons” with no connection, least

central

What more?

Reach: the degree any member of a network can reach other members of the network

Betweenness: Degree an individual lies between other individuals in the network: an intermediary; liaisons; bridges

closeness: the shortest distances between each individual and every other person in the network

Social networks - be aware!

• a digital representation of a social network

can hardly ever accurately show all the

connections of a rich real life situation,

like here today

• Yet, it can be useful!

eTwinning Ambassadors

What can the eTwinning network do for you?

What can you do for the eTwinning network?

eTwinning Ambassadors

The growth on the local level

is important!

eTwinning Ambassadors

Your relationships and ties with other eTwinning

members are important!

• Actions:

• Greet all the new comers and be in contact

personally (e.g. write on the wall, friend them..)

• Create loose groups on the local level so that a new

teacher can contact someone in a school nearby easily.

• . . .

eTwinning Ambassadors

Your “power” within the network

comes from the degree to which

your are at the center of many

relationships

“Power” places for Ambassadors

eTwinning Ambassadors

The "the strength of weak ties”

- open networks, with many weak

ties and social connections, are

more likely to introduce new new

ideas and opportunities to ideas and opportunities to

membersmembers!

eTwinning Ambassadors

Be aware of “cliques” where each

member knows more or less what

the other members knew

Are these cliques or Communities of

Practice?

Ambassadors are in the key position to find out, you

know your local communities :)

Everyone in the world is connection through

7 people

Can we make a European school

network where each school is

connected to another school

through 2 teachers?

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

thanks! for your attentionsocial networks user communities

discover people and projectsquestions?