The Internet As A Social Experience

Module
The Internet as a Social Experience

OVERVIEW
This module will present the information with regard to the use of Internet and to introduce students to the emerging area of Social Computing and Webbased systems. The module will introduce both theory and practice within this area, allowing students to gain hands-on skills along with a theoretical
understanding about some of the key themes. Students are expected to utilize social media (such as Blogs and twitter) as part of the course to better capture their
thinking and learning experience as they progress through the course and to interact better with a wider community on the Internet.
Objectives;
On completion of the module a student should be able to;
1. Understand the use of internet and emerging themes in social and web based computing,
2. Appreciate the importance of internet and how it affects in a social experience, and;
3. Demonstrate their knowledge and practical skills and to apply the principles taught by the lectures.
Materials
LCD
Computer
Worksheets
Audience
Computer Science Students
Lesson 1
The Internet and the Web
Computers have become indispsensable in the contemporary world as the powerful means for
communication and education. Learners' interest to learning languages has been enforced by
the availability of the Internet, which provides easy access to every possible kind of
information and serves as an effective tool to facilitate learning" (Kavaliauskiene, 2003, p.1 ).
According to Kavaliauskiene (2003), the concept of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) has been associated with the use of the Internet and implies the interactive
use of the World Wide Web for education. The Internet presents a reliable and continuously
update source both of general and specific interest material that are invaluable to learners.
The increasing emphasis and promotion of autonomous learning of foreign languages and the
widening role of online technology have lately become the major features in language
teaching. According to Lockwood's and Scott's (1999, p.8) opinion, Internet represents the
most important human invention in communication since the invention of the printing press
in 5th century Europe. Never before in human history have so many people been
interconnected, and never before have had individuals had so much information and so many
resources to communicate with others at their disposal. The Internet offers some truly unique
opportunities that can give teaching new impetus and be quite a lot of fan for the students.
Most importantly, ESP students get a lot of information related to their special fields in an
way that it is not boring. Despite the abundance of resources on the Internet, those resources
are not likely to be useful unless the students can locate them and know how to use them to
enhance their language learning experience. Being exposed is not enough if the student does
not have time or the English proficiency to analyze any of them. The degree to which the
Internet is useful is language learning depends fundamentally on how well the materials
found match the needs of the students and their ability level. For students with limited
language ability, even websites specially designed for ESL students will not prove helpful
unless the content is relevant and the instructions understandable. One important factor is the
role of teachers that can effectively help and guide students to learn English through ESL
websites already available on the Internet and then is the role of students to perceive and
learn English through these teacher-selected websites. As mentioned earlier, one of the
important factor that should be considered in ESP courses is the students' interests. According
to Liand Hart (1996), the web's multimedia capabilities and interactive functions have made
it an attractive medium to conduct instruction. Among the reasons for using the web in ESL
learning increased student motivation, authentic language, and global awarness have been
cited (Meloni, 1998). However, there are still many problems with the application of the
Internet in the classroom including the reliability of the information on the web, the cost of
the equipment needed to connect to the Internet, inequality of access between the haves and
have-nots, and frustrating slow connections (Lyman, 1998; Sussex & White, 1996;
Warschaver, 2000).
Lesson
Social Computing
Social Computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on
creating or recreating social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Thus, blogs, email, instant messaging, social network
services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing, but also other kinds of
software applications where people interact socially.
Theoretical Foundations of Social Computing

Socially intelligent computing is a new term that refers to the recent efforts of individuals to understand the ways in which systems of people and computers
will prove useful as intermediaries between people and tools used by people. These systems result in new behaviors that occur as a result of the complex
interaction between humans and computers and can be explained by several different areas of science. The Foundations of Social Computing are deeply vested in
the understanding of Social Psychology and Cyber psychology. Social Psychology covers topics such as decision making, persuasion, group behavior, personal
attraction, and factors that promote health and well-being. Cognitive sciences also play a huge role in understanding social computing and human behavior on
networking elements driven by personal needs/means. Sociology is also a factor since overall environments decide how individuals choose to interact.
Areas
There are multiple areas of social computing that have been able to expand the threshold of knowledge in this discipline. Each area has been able to have a
focus and goal behind it that provides us with a deeper understanding of the social behavior between users that interact using some variation of social computing.
Social Media
Social media has become an outlet that is one of the most widely used ways of interacting through computers. Though there are many different platforms
that can be used for social media, they all serve the same primary purpose of creating a social interaction through computers, mobile devices, etc. Social media
has evolved into not just an interaction through text, but through pictures, videos, GIFs, and many other forms of multimedia. This has provided users an
enhanced way to interact with other users while being able to more widely express and share during computational interaction. Within the last couple decades,
social media has blown up and created many famous applications within the social computing arena.
Social Networking
Through social networking, people are able to use platforms to build or enhance social networks/relations among people. These are people who commonly
share similar backgrounds, interests, or participate in the same activities. For more details see Social Networking Service.
Social Perceptions
Recent research has begun to look at interactions between humans and their computers in groups. This line of research focuses on the interaction as the
primary unit of analysis by drawing from fields such as psychology, social psychology, and sociology.[4][5]
Wiki Pages
A wiki provides computing users a chance to collaborate to come together with a common goal and provide content to the public; both novice and expert
users. Through the collaboration and efforts of many, a wiki page has no limit for the number of improvements that can be made.
Blogs
A blog, in social computing aspects, is more a way for people to follow a particular user, group, or company and comment on the progress toward the
particular ideal being covered in the blog. This allows users to interact using the content that is provided by page admin as the main subject.
Online Gaming
Online gaming is the social behavior of using an online game while interacting with other users. Online gaming can be done using a multitude of different
platforms; common ones include personal computers, Xbox, PlayStation, and many more gaming consoles that can be stationary or mobile.
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is currently a branch of social computing that has brought scale computing tasks to a new level when it comes to completion speed. This has
also given users a way to earn an income through things like Amazon Mechanical Turk.
Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is considered an area of social computing because of the group collaboration aspect. Becoming a growing area in computer science,
collective intelligence provides users with a way to gain knowledge through collective efforts in a social interactive environment.
Online Dating
Online dating has created a community of websites like Ok Cupid, eHarmony, and Match.com. These platforms provide users with a way to interact with
others that have goals relating to creating new relationships. The interaction between users in sites like these will differ based on the platform but the goal is
simple; create relationships through online social interaction.
Dark Social Media
The Dark social media is the social media tools used to collaborate between individuals where contents are supposed to be only available to the participants.
However, unlike mobile phone calls or messaging where information is sent from one user, transmitted through a medium and stored on each user devices, with
the medium having no storage permission of the actual content of the data, more and more communication methods include a centralized server where all the
contents are received, stored, and then transmitted. Some examples of these new mechanisms include Google Doc, Facebook Messages or Snapchat. All of the
information passes through these channels has largely been unaccounted for by users themselves and the data analytics. However, in addition to their respective
users private companies (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat) that provided these services do have complete control over such data. The number of images, links,
referrals and information pass through digital is supposed to be completely unaccounted for in the marketing scheme of things.

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Module

The Internet as a Social Experience

Theoretical Foundations of Social Computing

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