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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 1, Issue 2, December 2011)

171

Education Based On Social Networking with Privacy

Concern

1Priyanka Rani, priyankarani.niist@yahoo.com 2

Jagriti Chand, chandjagriti@gmail.com 3Vaibhav Patel, vaibhav.bce@gmail.com

Abstract—Participation in social networking sites has dramatically increased in recent years. Services like Orkut, Face book, My space and You tube are becoming more and more popular and has become part of daily life for an increasing number of people. In this paper, the main focus is on the impact of social networking sites on the education of students. The study argues that these social networking websites distract students from their studies, but these websites can be useful for education based on sound pedagogical principles and proper supervision by the teachers. Moreover, the research includes the study of information revelation in online social network & their privacy implication.

Keywords— Social Networking Sites, Education, Face

book, Privacy, Information revelation

I. INTRODUCTION

Social networking sites are a group of Web sites that provide people with the opportunity to create an online profile and to share that profile with others. The two most commonly used are MySpace, with over 400 million unique users, and Face book, with over 800 million unique users, about half of whom are college students. Face book have a variety of options and applications that make them attractive to a broad audience.

Social network sites are web-based services that allow individuals to –

(1) Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system,

(2) Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and

(3) View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

Social networking sites (SNS) like Face book have created a new social dimension where individuals can develop increased levels of their social awareness by keeping in touch with old friends, making new friends, dispense new data or product, and getting information in many more aspects of everyday lives, making one to become more knowledgeable which is very beneficial especially for students.

In an educational environment, engagement between a student and academic is of key importance and social networks such as Face book may be able to facilitate this engagement. Another issue that relates to social networking is the large number of technologies that can be used however some of these technologies may be more suited to an educational environment than others. On-line learning has becoming an ever-increasing way of facilitating education to students who are unable to attend a traditional on-campus university as well as supporting on-campus teaching.

Examples of Social networking sites

A. My SpaceSocial Networking Site

B. My Space was launched in 2003. The users can create profile, list school friends in which they attend, upload photos and develop a calendar. Additionally, it intends bringing various users together for personal and professional interaction.

C. Face book Social Networking Site

Face book‟s inception took place in 2004 and in February 2010 Face book announced it had reached its 400 millionth registered user (Schonfeld, 2010); by 2011 this figure was reported as 500 million (Face book, 2011). Face book is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and co-workers. The Face book environment means that any-one can sign up for Face book and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.

Twitter Social Networking Site

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 1, Issue 2, December 2011)

172

The aim of Twitter was to allow users to follow others without having to reciprocate and allow themselves to be followed and all posts were public by default and limited to 140 characters so they could fit inside cell phone text messages.

Face book has quickly become the social network site of choice by college students and an integral part of the “behind the scenes” college experience. Since its 2004 inception, virtually all colleges in India have designated college networks within the site. The adoption rates of Face book in universities and colleges are remarkable; 85% of college students that have a college network within Face book have adopted it. Furthermore, Face book also has a growing audience in perspective teachers‟ high school and middle school students. Not only are many teens registered on social networking sites, but they are also very active users.

[image:2.612.68.301.427.641.2]

The growth rate of active users using Face book social networking site (From 2008 to 2011) can be given by the following table-

Table 1

Tools Used In New On-line Learning Systems

Social networking services utilize the participation technology and software tools to facilitate communication and interaction between members. Social software communication tools include blogs, wikis, instant messaging, chat rooms, message boards and social bookmarking.

Members use these tools to share online ideas, documents, photos, videos, and favorite websites actually almost anything.

Wikis

“A wiki is essentially a website constructed in such a way as to allow users to change content on the site” (Graeme, 2006). Wikis are used in Education in several ways:

To support collaborative work, substituting old .doc or .PDF documents.

To produce a course or study corpus in cooperation with all academic stakeholders: lecturers, students, etc.

To distribute information to students, in order to facilitate the updating of materials.

Blogs

Blogs are used as a means of distributing news/information, or sharing personal opinions. Blogs are used in education in the following areas: Teachers use blogs as an easy way to produce dynamic learning environments without previous knowledge of html

Students use blogs as an alternative digital portfolio or as a learning log.

Ultimately, blogs have been used as support for collaborative work.

Social Book marking

Social book marking tools can also aid relation between people. The principle here is to bookmark web pages on the web, instead of in the browser. Using RSS, it is also possible to subscribe to people‟s bookmarks meaning you get notified whenever certain people bookmark a new page (Dalsgaard, 2008).

The above technologies are not in any way all the technologies used in social software. However, since most e-learning systems exist within the confinement of the institution, there are limited implementations of the listed technologies and they are often replaced or implemented as:

Discussion forums/boards Instant messaging E-mail

Documents/video sharing Notice boards etc

Date Users

(in millions)

August 26, 2008 100

April 8, 2009 200

September 15, 2009 300

February 5, 2010 400

July 21, 2010 500

January 5, 2011 600

May 30, 2011 700

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 1, Issue 2, December 2011)

173

II. SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES

Social networking systems such as Face book are an ever evolving and developing means of social interaction, which is not only being used to disseminate information to family, friends and colleagues but as a way of meeting and interacting with "strangers" through the advent of a large number of social applications. The emergence of Web 2.0 and related internet sites such as Face book has had a major impact upon the Internet in recent years. One of the interesting aspects of Face book is the use of third party applications and the interactions that this allows. This means that an individual Face book page now act as a web page, blog, instant messenger, email system and the use of third parties applications allows for real time functionality. The researchers modified the key criteria in regards to technology being a human issue in the following manner:

Requirement: Social networking is about engagement, the issue is the required level of the engagement in terms of social connectivity or the required level of information being delivered;

Satisfaction: The satisfaction concerns to the interaction of the social networking systems and the level of the information exchange that is occurring and the type of information being exchanged, e.g. social, factual, video, images, audio, etc;

[image:3.612.72.306.528.669.2]

Context: The context relates to where the social engagement is taking place, e.g. formal context, information, community of special interest, etc.

Figure 1

Users of Social Networking Sites

The majority of users of the SNSs are youngsters especially the most common are students in higher education. SNSs allow students to express themselves, communicate, and collect profiles that highlight their talents and experiences. Researchers have fast realized the need to incorporate this into the educational faculties as a resource to support the educational communications between students and faculties.

An email is a familiar technology that lecturers already adopt in exchanging educational messages between them and students. Academic performance is defined as”…how students deal with their studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers”.

Involvement of a student in these forms of activities such as making friends on social networks should be seen as a way of having access to up to date information that is relevant and can be channeled towards improving his academic performance.

SNSs are also being used by teachers and students especially in the West as a communication tool. Professors and teachers use forums and groups to extend classroom deliberations. Some of them usually use Twitter to communicate announcements and information to their students. It is a bi-directional process as students too are using these mediums to share comments to their teachers

In addition to the incredible usage rate among students, there are a number of unique features that make social networks amenable to educational pursuits. For example,

Face book is equipped with bulletin boards, instant messaging, email, and the ability to post videos and notes of their subjective lectures. Most notably, anyone can post information and collaborate within the system. Recently, Face book has opened up development of downloadable applications, which can further supplement the educational functions of Face book.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 1, Issue 2, December 2011)

174

The average growth percentage of Face book active users (by age group) in India from 2010 to 2011 can be represented by the following Table.

Face book also increases both teacher-student and student-student interaction in the form of web-based communication. Face book helps instructors connect with their students about assignments, upcoming events, useful links, and samples of work outside of the classroom. Students can use Face book to contact classmates about questions regarding class assignments or examinations as well as collaborate on assignments and group projects in an online environment. Building on the face-to-face, teacher-student relationship, social networks allow teacher-students to glimpse instructor profiles containing personal information, interests, background, and “friends,” which can enhance student motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate.

Benefits of social networking sites in Education

Beyond high usage rates and some technological advantages, social networks, such as Face book, can provide numerous other pedagogical advantages to both teachers and students.

· Students enjoy basic e-learning facilities, and with the use of social tools, collaboration is promoted. · Out of the class learning is encouraged and students learn from other sources which include their colleagues, lecturers and the non-academic community.

· A large network of resources is developed, and the learning scope increased. Students can subscribe to blogs or forums that are not necessarily in their field.

· Collaboration is greatly encouraged within students, and also within the teachers.

· Hindrances like distance, privacy (like in the case of guidance and counseling) etc are eliminated as students enjoy a “personal” one-stop access to both academic and nonacademic resources.

· Information dissemination is simplified and greatly enhanced. Students can receive information from several departments just on their screen.

The global use of social networking sites such as Face book has developed in recent years and now impacts all aspects of society from business, education to social activities. The Yearly growth of Face book social networking site by their active users can be represented by the following graph.

Figure 2 Privacy

Social networking sites such as Face book provide individuals with a way of maintaining and strengthening social ties, which can be beneficial in both social and academic settings. These same sites, however, also pose a danger to students‟ privacy, safety, health and professional reputations if proper precautions are not taken. Social networking tools pose serious threats that could easily jeopardize the main essence of the adopting system. Social networking sites are set up to provide individuals with a means for communicating and interacting with one another.

AGE GRO UP

2010 RECORD 2011 RECORD GROWTH

USERS PERCE

NTAGE

USERS PERCE

NTAGE

13-17 10,680,14 0

10.4% 13,114,78 0

8.9% 22.8%

18-24 26,075,96 0

25.3% 45,406,46 0

30.9% 74.1%

25-34 25,580,10 0

24.8% 33,171,08 0

22.6 29.7%

35-54 29,917,64 0

29.0% 39,595,90 0

27.0 32.3%

55+ 9,763,900 9.5% 15,516,78 0

10.6 58.9%

UNK NOW N

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, Volume 1, Issue 2, December 2011)

175

Privacy is defined here as personal information that an individual deems important and unattainable by the general population. Privacy also involves the individual‟s right to control the dissemination of personal information. When contemplating issues of privacy, there are two important considerations to keep in mind: the intent of the information shared and the expectation that it will remain private. Both Face book and My Space provide a clear privacy statement to inform users about the limits of protection that the site maintains for the information shared, as well as how the site will use the personal information provided.

With the new technology, questions about ethical use and the lines of what is private and what is not have become so blurry and misunderstood that students can find themselves involved in situations that are less than desirable. When an individual uses privacy settings to prevent most users from viewing his or her information, the user has an expectation that this information will remain private although this information too can be accessed by others. Understanding privacy as it relates to social networking sites requires understanding how personal information may be shared and the intent of sharing it. Information obtained from a social networking site is not considered an illegal search of a person‟s private information because it is found in plain view in a public forum.

Some social networking sites like Face book provide a clear privacy statement to inform users about the limits of protection that the site maintains for the information shared, as well as how the site will use the personal information provided. On most sites, a user can restrict who can see the profile and is given options to create a limited profile that makes parts of his or her information unavailable to all friends.

Face book enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. Face book requires a user's name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible byeveryone.

Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings. One of the most popular applications on Face book is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.

Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album.

Finally, while the possibility of totally eliminating this threat might not be possible, it can be reduce to an acceptable level and managed effectively. Important issues like privacy can be handled as deemed fit by the institutions in accordance to their governing policy.

III. CONCLUSION

This paper has reflected upon the use of social networking technologies in an educational context SNSs have more positive impact on their academic performance. This is due to the fact that the SNSs can be used for various academic activities such as communicating with the faculty and university authority, communicating with lecturers and supervisors, making academic discussions with classmates and chatting with friends in respect to topics of educational interest. Social Networks provide an alternative to the traditional lecture format, creating an online classroom community, and increasing teacher-student and student-student interaction. Issues related to student privacy and vulnerability with social networking sites are growing concerns that need to be addressed by institutions as a whole.

References

[1] Berg, J., Berquam, L., and Christoph, K. “Social Networking Technologies: A „Poke‟ for Campus Services.” EDUCAUSE Review, Mar.–Apr. 2007, 32–44.

[2] Berman, J., and Bruening, P. “Is Privacy Still Possible in the Twenty-First Century?” Social Research, 2001. Retrieved Aug. 8, 2007, from http://www.cdt.org/publications/ privacyystill.shtml. Baldwin,

[3] T. T. , Bedell, M. D. and Johnson, J. L.. The social fabric of a team- based M.B.A. program: network effects on student satisfaction and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 40(6), 1997.

[4] Lieblein, E. Critical factors for successful delivery of online programs. Internet and Higher Education, 3: 161-174, 2000.

Figure

Table 1
Figure 1 173

References

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