Here is an example of a social network in education. I heard it recently called 'network learning.' Ning is the best platform I've found, although the adds can be annoying. (>)_(<)
An article in last week's Education Week looks at the increasingly common practice of reading aloud to middle and high school students. In discussing the practice with Mary Ann Zehr (I'm quoted briefly in the piece) I made the point that while there is certainly nothing wrong with reading out loud to teenagers, it is symptomatic of what I call "literacy creep" - the tendency of elementary school-style instructional techniques to find their way deeper into K-12 education across all content areas.
We believe that a child who graduates from high school without an understanding of culture, the arts, history, literature, civics, and language has in fact been left behind. So to improve education in America, we're promoting programs, policies, and initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels that provide students with challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences.
The College now has a student subscription to this site. If you direct students to access it with the username Sheldon and the password College they can access it at home. Either that or you can use it in the classroom.
Uses Wikipedia articles to generate mind maps, maps, diagrams, etc to accompany the information. Of course no good for student research, but maybe useful for homework or a lesson activity.