Social Networks in Portugal

Hello everyone,

It hasn't been a busy week here at IPL as most students and teachers are preparing their Christmas holidays. But our “Akademicos”, which is our school newspaper and which is totally created by students, had a thematic issue concerning social networks. Some of its focus has been given to their use by Erasmus students, to “connect” to their country land friends. Also, me and Antonia have been asked to write its editorial.
On reflecting on this task, we thought on IEOL and the use we give to such tools. We transcribe here some parts of the article we wrote. It’s also some “food for thought” for our group and project.
Have a nice Christmas everyone!!!
- Filipe & Antónia


Some years ago the Internet has seen the rise of a set of services that made its users “producers” of information rather than mere “consumers”. The blog and the wiki have been the “icon” of this revolution (coined Web 2.0) and users used them to produce personal information such as their global opinions on world issues.
Today a new type of service, social networks, is the icon of this revolution. But instead of using these tools to “produce information”, users are using them to “produce relationships”. We use them to share feelings, states of mind, emotions. We use them to create relations. This is the way the technological platforms for these services are oriented: we click an “I like” button and a relationship becomes stronger.
This is an extraordinary technology which will certainly evolute in the future. What can be the face of such evolution? We personally believe that these technologies will blend and participate in other human activities, such as collaborative work and collaborative learning. We already see some of these platforms, such as Facebook, to allow events scheduling and “group” management, but new tools will rise (although for now, we can argue, it is just the “communication platform” that is set, which is not a small feature!). But in the future we will certainly see “tools for learning” in these platforms. A kind of “I like” button to build learning relations.
A tremendous future. Let’s hope that its implementation is near.