Call for Papers: Social Networking Sites for Formal Learning

A  special issue of  International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments

In recent years, social networking sites such as Facebook, Google +, Twitter, weblogs and wikis have been popularly used by young people and adults to share information and interact with each other. These platforms were not initially designed for educational purposes. Like any new technology, however, they have great potential for teaching and learning.

The objectives of this special issue are twofold. They are firstly to share pedagogical, social and technical affordances of social networking sites for formal learning in the secondary school or tertiary education context, and secondly to address implementation issues, concerns or challenges that teachers or students may have when they are using social networking sites in real practice. The discussion in this special issue will have implications for the effective use of social networking sites in education.

The issue welcomes conceptual papers on technological affordances and challenges of social networking sites for teaching and learning, and empirical research papers and case studies about using social media to support teaching and learning in various contexts.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Social networking sites (e.g. weblog, wiki, Facebook, Twitter) for learning
• Pedagogical, social and technical affordances of social media for teaching and learning
• Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning
• Issues and concerns with using social media for learning
• Web-based collaborative and interactive learning
• Using social media to support collaborative learning
• Formal learning with social technologies
• Interactive and social learning
• Course design and development based on social media

Important Dates
Full paper submission: 30 September, 2012
Notification of acceptance: 15 November, 2012
Final submission: 31 December, 2012