Amara’s Law (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara">backstory</a>) states that “<em>we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.</em>”

<h2>11. Metcalfe’s Law</h2> <p>This was the original conception of network effects, whereby the potential value of a network grows exponentially according to its size.</p>

The fundamental definition of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect">network effect</a> is “<em>when a product or service has more value the more that other people have it too.</em>”

In fact, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_effort">Principle of Least Effort</a> notes that they will tend to use the most convenient method, in the least exacting way available, with interaction stopping as soon as minimally acceptable results are achieved. As a result, well-known social scientist <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/buzzwatch/2008/05/05/wisdom-on-crowds-what-ceos-need-to-know-about-the-social-web/">Clay Shirky notes</a> that the most “brutally simple” social model often is the most successful one (using Twitter as an example.)

<h2>Reed’s Law</h2> <p>Researcher David Reed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law">discovered that</a> the network effect of social systems is much higher than would otherwise be expected, helping to explain the sudden rise of social systems in the latter half of this decade. While adding a social architecture to a piece of software for no specific reason isn’t helpful either, it turns out that in general, software (and indeed, any networked system) is better the more social it is.</p>

Reflexivity asserts that social actions can and do in fact influence the fundamental behavior of a social system and that these newly-influenced set of fundamentals can then proceed to change expectations, thus influencing new behavior. The process continues in a self-reinforcing pattern.

Youth engage with others to work out boundaries, to understand norms. This is how they learn power and authority, how they learn the networked architecture of everyday life. It's easy to eschew this, to argue that this is irrelevant, but most people spend a decent amount of their time working through social issues as a part of being an adult in this society. We talk about it as "politics" usually but it's about people. And teen years are where this is worked out.

Since we're using social network sites as a case study, let me point out one of the places where they FAIL miserably. On social network sites, you have to publicly list your Friends and you have to have the functioning network to leverage it. What happens if you're an outcast at school? Does bringing it into the classroom make it worse? What happens if you're forced to Friend someone who torments you because you share a class? And then you have to face that person in your "private" space online as well? Bringing social network sites into the classroom can be very very tricky because you have to contend with social factors that you, as a teacher, may not be aware of.

It's critical to realize that just because young folks pick up a technology before you do doesn't inherently mean that they understand it better than you do. Or that they have a way of putting it into context. What they're doing is not inherently more sophisticated – it's simply different. They're coming of age in a culture where these structures are just a given. They take them for granted. And they repurpose them to meet their needs. But they don't necessarily think about them.

Educators have a critical role when it comes to helping youth navigate social media. You can help them understand how to make sense of what they're seeing. We can call this "media literacy" or "digital literacy" or simply learning to live in a modern society. Youth need to know more than just how to use the tools - they need to understand the structures around them.

This issue is all about trust. Schools don’t trust students or teachers to do the right thing. Companies don’t trust employees. but the problem lies not with the technology, but with with setting expectations and ensuring those expectations are met. When a company blocks access to social media, it is blocking access to its own future growth and when a school blocks access to social media it is blocking access to a student’s future growth.

Information overload does not exist. Failing information strategies do exist. We were brought up with information strategies based on scarcity. We live in times of information abundance.

When asked what they learn by using social networking sites, the students listed 'technology skills', followed by 'creativity', being 'open to new or diverse views' and 'communication skills'.

<strong>Is transparency one of the key benefits to this sort of job search?</strong> <br> Absolutely. I wanted the transparency. The problem with traditional résumé interviewing is it's so one-dimensional and it's so easy to paint yourself as something. If I can look at your social network, I can see much more. This took a level of trust for the people who were reaching out to me. But I did say that I'm a big enough boy, that I'm OK if you talked about partying or things that you do in your personal life. I want to know who you are. I'm a human being as well, and I don't care that you do things, because I expect that human beings would do these things.

Udutu brings to the eLearning community the world's first LMS designed to run on popular Social Networks such as Facebook.

Well-integrated technology opens social networks for students and allows children to develop key social skills, according to two recent studies conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

<p>Bloggers reported a greater sense of belonging to a group of like-minded people and feeling more confident they could rely on others for help.</p> <p>All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.</p>

Online spaces are blurring, as universities that podcast and text their students have shown. The Jisc project manager, Lawrie Phipps, explains how the battle lines are being drawn: "Students really do want to keep their lives separate. They don't want to be always available to their lecturers or bombarded with academic information."