SNS Project

Over the past five years, I have been involved with several colleagues at Monash (including Robyn Spence-Brown, Mari Morofushi, and Naomi Kurata) in the running of a social networking project, which I initially developed in 2007. The project (previously reported on in Pasfield-Neofitou 2008 and Pasfield-Neofitou, Morofushi and Spence-Brown 2009) involves the use of Bebo (http://www.bebo.com/) in order to increase students’ opportunities for Japanese use and self expression, develop student-teacher and student-student relationships outside the classroom, and allow students to share their interests with their classmates and teachers. The project has run since its introduction in 2007, and has been continually evaluated (in the form of student surveys and interviews) and developed since.This gallery showcases some images from the Japanese1020 social networking site on Bebo, including a sample profile, whiteboard, blog entry, photo album, and tips from "Bebo Sensei" ("Bebo Teacher"), a site maintained by the teaching team to provide students with guidance on the use of Japanese online.