Abstract:

In 2010 The Neilson Media Group (2010) found that 70% of New Zealanders surveyed had a Facebook persona. With this level of engagement with the online social networking space why are New Zealand educators not consistently utilizing Facebook as an integral e-learning tool for students to discuss course content and collaborate on their assessments? Particularly as, international research has found that social network sites encourage students to collaborate with each other, as well as adding value to, and enhancing the contextualization of, their knowledge. While this article acknowledges the ongoing criticism associated with the use of social networking spaces as an elearning tool, the focus is to analyse the positive aspects of the use of Facebook in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education to engage with our target audiences. From this position this article has identified educators need to be involved with ICT policy development and review to ensure policies are robust, value based, and focused on growing responsible digital citizens to encourage this engagement. Furthermore, to achieve these values based policies there needs to be a focus for New Zealand educators producing scholarly outputs that capture a New Zealand cultural perspective in relation to the incentives, and barriers, of integrating social networking into the classroom.

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