Every now and then I scan Emily Chang's eHub as one of my sources for Web 2.0 teaching and travel tools for my two blogs on those topics (this is the education one; the travel one is here). Recently she posted several social networking website for university students and alumni. Unlike Facebook, which is more of a college-based MySpace, these are focused on collaborative learning, networking for future employment, and campus life.
CLASSROOM NETWORKS
NoteMesh - "Collaborate to Graduate: NoteMesh is a free service that allows college students in the same classes to share notes with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit." I think this is a good idea and may even create my own wikis for my classes to discuss and share notes. However, when I mentioned this to my daughter, she suggested that the best students might not want to share their notes with the slackers in a class. In addition, just because there are a lot of students contributing to a set of notes does not mean the notes will be error-free.
Notecentric - "Notecentric is a web based note taking application. Notecentric keeps your notes organized and readily available online." Notecentric allows you to keep your notes online for a class that you are in. You can also elect to be connected with other students in the class (if they are registered with Notecentric), who you can then communicate with and, at your option, share your notes. This is an online version of the more traditional face-2-face ways of sharing notes in a class.
CAREER NETWORKING
Alumwire - "Alumwire is a professional college network that provides personal and career opportunities for alumni, students, and faculty." You either need to have a .edu email address or a Facebook account to register with Alumwire. The site appears to be very new. There is almost no information on the public website. Once you register and log in, there are sections on Job Search, Career Interviews, Career Advice Forums, My Connections (other members), and a Calendar tool. The Advice Forum only has a few postings. If you like basic and simple, you may find this of use, though I am not sure just how many job offers will come from it if the use base is small.
IdeaWhip - "An Entrepreneurial Community For Undergrads, Graduate Students, and Young Alumni...by Them." This is a social networking site for future business people to share ideas and experiences in starting their own business. It also included links to related news stories and online presentations.
CAMPUS LIFE
Campus Central - "For Life Outside the Classroom" at Canadian universities. Sections on this website include Books (for selling textbooks), Classified (for selling anything), Events, Articles (on sports, sex + dating, entertainment, studying, etc.), Profiles (of members), and Message Board (for general discussions). It appears to be very new with not many members or postings, as yet.
CampusReader - "America's College Newspaper" - I think I once saw a print version of this -- a collection of news articles from college and university papers around this US. This one is online and has a lot of articles. You can even customize a section of the homepage to show news items from universities in states near your zip code, which I think could be very valuable. Two other sections on the homepage are "Top Stories" and "Reader Roulette" (random stories from a random state).
