What about other kinds of social networking sites? With new social
networking sites popping up everyday, it can be hard to know which ones
to use.  For the US overall, here are the statistics in terms of
popularity:


 

For more, click here
<http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005844&src=article1_newsltr>
. 

 

Facebook has its origins on college campuses, and although a growing
number of non-college folks on getting on board now, Facebook still
doesn't have the same level of popularity among our target population.
Recent research demonstrates "The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or
other "good" kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come
from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are
part of what we'd call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but
not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the
prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities. MySpace
is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts,"
"alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer
kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school
popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college,
who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who
are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of
the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks,
freaks, or queers."  Here's an article on the popular blog
boingboing.net that speaks to this more deeply: 
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/24/myspace_facebook_mir.html . 

 

Another article called "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and
Non-Users of Social Network Sites": 
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/hargittai.html also suggests that
Facebook and MySpace usage are divided by race/ethnicity and parent
education (two common measures of "class" in the U.S.). The author's
findings are based on a survey of 1060 first year students at the
diverse University of Illinois-Chicago campus during February and March
of 2007.

 

Antidotal evidence from the students that we serve indicates that these
race/ethnicity boundaries may be shifting.  The use of Facebook,
although still relatively small, is on the rise among our target
population.  Facebook offers a range of different features that are
attracting youth, including games and the ability to search people by
high school.  OBT is currently looking into the possibility of starting
a Facebook page in anticipation of Facebook newcomers.

 

There are also a range of social networking sites that are
content-centric (such as LinkedIn, discussed in the previous email).
One of the most notable ones for ESOL learners is MIXXER: 
http://www.language-exchanges.org/  Students learning another language
can join a community in that language, where they will be exposed to
conversational and colloquial reading and writing, learn about daily
life, and establish friendships with native speakers. The MIXXER is a
site devoted to helping language students find conversational partners
and connecting them using voice-over-IP software (i.e. Skype).
Additional sites content-specific sites that are on the rise can be
found here: 
http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2006/06/social-networking-five-sites-you-n
eed.html.  Many of these have a broad international base and your ESOL
students could be familiar with them. Also, Mashable.com
<http://www.mashable.com/>  provides day to day updates in trends in the
social networking sphere.  There is a lot of room to be creative in the
kind of social networking tools you implement into your program. At the
end of the day, what you choose will be depend of what your goals are
for your specific program.

 

I encourage anyone who has experimented with different social networking
sites to tell their story!  We are really only at the tip of the iceberg
for what social networking can mean for adult literacy.

 

 

______________________________

Emily May

Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow

783 4th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11232

718-369-0303

emay at obtjobs.org

www.obtjobs.org

 

<mailto:emay at obtjobs.org> 

  

 

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