The new social network name as SOCL (Socialized) will integrate three factors that nowadays specialists see as future trends: tastes, searches and communicative interaction. Consumers want to read things that matter and grasp their interest. Therefore this new social network tries to integrate this platform as a platform towards education.

Microsoft has chosen students as the main target for this new network. The purpose of the new social network is to allow students to share useful information in a fast and effective way. The platform has been developed and tested in an experimental way. And the main objective is to expand the way that the students use the social media and expand their educational experience by learning to communicate in a better way and convert this platform into a “the new classroom”.

Several Universities such as: Washington University, Syracuse University and New York University are the only institutions that have been allowed to try this new service. Although in the future hopefully a lot more add to the list.

According to a post exposed on the Microsoft Research website, this new network has been exclusively designed to broaden their educational experience and propose a new way in how students learn and communicate.

SOCL will basically allow its users to perform any other tasks featured in other networks, such as posts, uploading pictures and videos, or sharing content among friends. But something unusual and a section that it highlights form the others is the possibility of searching and finding students with similar tastes, build communities that have the same educational aspirations.

The Exchange of ideas and knowledge is something that is going to be a valuable aspect in this network. Throughout the project: Montage. SOCL will expose a visual collage of images, videos and stories. Allowing the user to choose what he wants to read, hear or learn.

An application called “Video Party” will enable the possibility to share a video. Several people will be able to watch a video on the same time and thought-out a chat they can interact, discuss and talk among each participant.

Lili Cheng, general manager of FUSE Labs exposed: “What we’ve seen in the last year or two is innovation in the way schools are teaching and learning from students, creating new programs to study how information spreads, motivates learning, and creates expertise,” Cheng says. “A hugely popular freshman course in some schools is Social Media 101, which often leads to a project-based innovation course where students build and deploy their ideas.

“These are not just computer-science students, but also business, design, or humanities students. They don’t necessarily write code, but they can be encouraged to re-imagine how social software and the way people are sharing and exchanging information shapes the world. We are experimenting with So.cl to use our own tools to partner with more students and learn from students with a broad base of expertise.”

Noticing how students have adopted new skills and search for new ways of acquiring knowledge, Shelly Farnham, a FUSE Labs researcher working on So.cl. Said: “Today, social media is a really active part of the learning process,” Farnham says. “It’s a common story that we hear: Someone will first hear about something because their friend mentioned it on Facebook or they saw it mentioned on Twitter and from there, they search in Wikipedia or through a search engine. Then they’ll go back and do searches within Twitter to find out not just the content of a news story, but also how their friends are responding to that news story. There’s this real sense of a conversation happening within social media around what they are learning.”

The idea is to foment learning and allow students to find people with the same interests and provoke subjects of conversation where the exchange of ideas is a constant activity.

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About the author

Estefania Herrera
I come from the half of the world, Ecuador. I am 22 and by leaving my country to study abroad in Spain, I've grown up as a person in an incredible way. Therefore I say, its good to experience new things, and get to know new cultures. But most importantly LiVe, lOvE and LaUgH.