Linking Social Network to Education: The Potentials and Challenges

Despite the relatively short history of Social Network Sites or Services (SNS), it has quickly gained popularity with more than seven hundred million users all over the globe. The SNS emerged as one of the strongest cultural influences for the contemporary society. The SNS would provide both chances and challenges for Education. The main purpose of the article was to explore the way education react and adapt to the emergence of social network and SNS. It tried to provide major theoretical grounds that bridge education and social network. In the due process, the researchers have examined the curriculum and instructional design process of education from the perspective of disruptive and sustainable aspect of SNS technology. Consequently, four major theoretical grounds were identified and reviewed: Gibson's theory of affordance, Vygotsky's social constructivism, Rha's human visual intelligence theory, and the network theory. By investigating these theories, the educational potentials of social network and SNS were emerged. The SNS was viewed as a new medium with abundant potentials of expanding the learning space, empowering the affective aspects of learning, and facilitating the formation of group intelligence. Finally, some future implications and challenges of SNS were suggested.