Networks of Personalized Learning

Social networking has been around for a while, but it has been generally ignored within academia for two reasons: all of the sites were hosted, and the well-known sites were not recognized for their academic discussions. (Bryant, 2006) The product positioning can affect people very much. Take “Games” for example. Its product positioning is for entertainment. Therefore, when we try to use educational games to motivate or interest students in learning, some teachers and parents may have negative perspective because of its product positioning.

Another example is the mobile device – iPhone. The product positioning of this kind smartphone is set for entertainment. You can see the download ranking of iPhone and iPad in this websites. You can see the following link, the first two pages are occupied by games and very few other applications (but all of them are not for education) http://www.topappcharts.com/search.php?show=category&category=Top+Apps&start=20&price=free&platform=iphone

No matter how we strive for using this kind of technology in education, I doubt that how many people would use them to learn outside the class.

Reference

Todd Bryant. “Social Software in Academia,” EDUCAUSE Quarterly 29, no. 2 (2006), http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/SocialSoftwareinAcademia/39976