Participation and collaboration as literacies in social media

In this video Howard Rheingold among others talk about literacies in social media. Participation is an important literacy in digital era. According to Rheingold “expressing yourself and connecting with your peers is something you want to do especially the youth”. That’s why young people connect to the Internet and participate in social media and virtual communities. Not because their teachers or parents told them to do so.

It is a human need to connect with peers and express ideas. And this need is present in the whole history of man as a social animal. However the ways to satisfy this human need are different in the era of participatory media. Today we confront the challenge of taking advantage of social media in formal education system. Participation and collaboration can form Personal Learning Networks for education modern young persons. To do this modern educators need to participate and use social media and also need to know how to make a platform for their students to participate and form a virtual learning community.

In social internet age, literacies are as important, or even more, as technologies. And peers are better than classmates. Personal Learning Networks are a form of social capital.