Educational and Social Benefits of Social Network Sites - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 29

had created, photographs, graphically interesting
backgrounds, music, song lyrics, links to other
artifacts).
In addition to sharing photographs, Theresa
shared her creative and school-related writing.
Prior to joining MySpace, she felt others rarely
read her work, but MySpace helped motivate such
efforts by giving her multiple audiences for which
to perform. The audience for her school writing
was generally classmates while the audience for
her creative writing and photography was a diverse
group of people, such as artists she had come into
contact with through MySpace and believed she
would not have known otherwise. Theresa's sense
was that people young and old enjoyed sharing
their creativity in SNSs: “I know people that
dance and sing and they have little videos on their
profiles and I know some other poets and people
who like to write and rap and do art and paint and
take photographs and everything.”
The interconnections and creative capabili-
ties evident in SNSs like MySpace offer learners
initiation into a Web-based “participatory culture”
(Jenkins, 2006) with low barriers to artistic ex-
pression and civic engagement, strong support for
creating and sharing one's digital productions, a
sense of social connections to each another (or at
least caring what other people think about what one
has created), and a belief that contributions matter.
Participatory culture is manifested as: affiliations
such as “groups” or “forums” centered around
people's background, interests, connections, and
media; creative self- or collective expressions (e.g.,
video-making, mash-ups), and circulations (e.g.,
podcasting, blogging) (Jenkins, 2006, p. 1). Such
opportunities potentially enrich learning by mak-
ing it more personally meaningful, collaborative,
and socially relevant.
Moreover, the self-assertiveness and confi-
dence developed by “speaking my mind” to a
select audience, often for purely social reasons,
may encourage youth to turn to those networks
for help in solving important problems or deci-
sions. As 21 st century educators, we value critical

thinking, reflective decision-making, and collabo-
ration and seek to develop these competencies in
today's learners to prepare them for tomorrow.
In MySpace networks, youth may be developing
their ability to solicit advice and feedback from
others they trust in order to manage projects and
explore solutions. This was evident in Theresa's
case where she and her peers in a school program
posted excerpts of their essays within MySpace
so that the group could collaboratively determine
how the essay should be structured. Theresa com-
mented: “Everybody's always working on projects
like this at the same time and so, we'll [post in
MySpace]: 'How long did you take on your es-
say?' or 'How'd you begin in there? How'd you
write it?' So then sometimes we'll share that and
everybody kind of does it, at least in our SLC
[small learning community].”
Beyond creative thinking, multimedia com-
munication, and collaborative problem-solving
skills, we as educators also want our students
to develop research and information fluency
for the 21 st century. It is not enough to consult
one source, such as a family member or book;
in today's constantly shifting, global economy,
learners need to be skilled in consulting multiple
sources of information and people and synthesiz-
ing disparate bits of data, often in teams, to make
well-informed, strategic decisions. Past research
on students' online inquiry processes has docu-
mented students' difficulties in finding quality
information online and discerning the truth or reli-
ability of information they find (Kuiper, Volman
& Terwel, 2005). “Social navigation” (Jonassen,
2000) within SNSs—as when a group of users
with common interests help each other navigate
the Web's complexities by sharing URLs, personal
contacts, and aggregated resources —may help
learners develop more nuanced research strategies
and greater information fluency. The young people
we interviewed told us they “tapped the network”
to gather information on various topics, and this
was evidenced in MySpace bulletin posts from
individuals seeking information or responding