+1 Matters: Social Networks and Education |
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| Event | Interactive 2012 |
| Format | Dual |
| Organizer | Erhardt Graeff – BetterGrads |
| Speakers |
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| Description | Every year, high schools lose their most valuable resources when alumni leave for college. With online social networking, this doesn’t have to happen. This presentation is about the importance of social capital for education. Most people know social capital from the book Bowling Alone: it’s the stuff that drives civic life. But it can drive many other things, like a student’s success in college or career. At BetterGrads, we connect recent graduates back to their public high schools as mentors, regardless of distance, because unlike their private school peers, public school students lack strong connections to successful alumni. This is basic social networking, made possible by tools we take for granted like email and video chat. We want to make sure the value of social networking for social capital is not taken for granted by educators and entrepreneurs. We’ll talk about research informing our point of view, and program and technology decisions we’ve made to put social capital at the fore. |
| Questions Answered |
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| Level | Intermediate |
| Supporting Material | http://bettergrads.org/ |
| Category | Education / Online Learning |
| Tags | educational technology, social capital, Social Networking |