Education/learning in network communities involves activities in which the members acquire, share, publish and create knowledge by joining in the communities to communicate with each other. The main topic addressed in this review paper is to classify fundamental technologies for scaffolding and promoting such education/learning activities. The key idea on this classification is to organize the fundamental technologies in each type of network community, with which social capital in the community increases, and with which the sustainability of the education/learning activities could be maximized.

System environments for supporting social activities on the network have attracted considerable attention of educators and researchers in learning science field. This paper comprehensively reviews the bright cases of system and practice that adopt SNS (Social Networking Services) for education and learning. This paper surveys functions, objectives and features of existing SNS focusing on particular cases specialized for typical situations. In addition, strategic viewpoints in designing educational SNS are suggested together with multilateral discussion on actual cases. Finally, guidelines for smart development and practical use of SNS are implied through the discussion.

As the recent use of Social Networking Service (SNS) in educational settings advanced, feature of SNS should be considered on the system and class design. This paper introduces and reviews practical use of SNS in education, in order to suggest the application of the use of SNS in education settings; First, we explain three points of the use of SNS in educational settings; the significance, feature, and issues of communication design. Next, we review the educational use of SNS in formal class, informal community in class, and local area community. Lastly, we exposit the evaluation methods for the effect of SNS use on education.

The relationships between network structures of learners and learning effects in networked learning spaces are not clari.ed yet. In this study, Statistical Physics-like ideas and techniques of the theory of social impact, which have developed in the desciplin of Social Psychology, are applied to investigate these questions. We investigated some effects that network structures provide to learners by a simulation model based on Social Impact Theory. As a result, it is clarified that different charactristics of network structures formed among the learners provide different influences to learning effects. This paper will report these results and discuss.

In 2008 and 2009, we practiced Cooperative Learning (CL) twice between learners of Japanese as a second language in Hong Kong and trainees to be a Japanese teacher in Kyoto by using SNS. The questionnaire after CL showed that 2008-CL was not fully activated in terms of ‘social presence’ and ‘social support’. In 2009-CL, we improved the following points to get the students to feel social presence and social support; 1) corrections should be directly written in SNS, not in attached files, so that they are visible, 2) some of the functions of SNS are refined, 3) CL is performed in a group, not in pair, 4) corrections are given not only to a part of the learners’ essays, but also to all parts, 5) instructors take the role of facilitators. Due to these improvements, 2009-CL became more activated than 2008-CL.

The drug abuse by younger generation covering smoking and drinking comes up as a hot issue in Japan. It is terrible that the 26% of junior high school students have experienced drinking due to their parents’ temptation and caused increasing drinkers. This paper proposes an educational program to prevent students from drinking which can be implemented in the current curriculum “Health Management”. The Preventive Education Support System to Drinking which both students and their parents would be able to practice at home was implemented as an output according to the program.

This system supports the enlightenment procedure for parents or guardians and preventive action to student drinkers in trouble, through a human network linking a school, hospitals and homes to be the core of the prevention. It has been operated in the field, in collaboration with some junior high schools. The results of the subjective performance evaluation of the system with questionnaires show the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Though universities have recently been promoting globalization through increases in the number of international students, they face various problems such as supporting the daily needs of current international students and providing follow-up service for students who have returned home. The present study addressed the functions and uses of a SNS (Social Networking Service) system where Japanese students, teachers, and staff and international students exchange information informally to support the exchange program. The effectiveness of the pilot SNS system was analyzed at an international center of an actual university. This study aimed at verifying whether useful information was in fact provided to both current international students and to Japanese students planning to study abroad. The study also looked at whether such information offered solutions to specific problems concerning international exchange. Conclusions of this study were used to determine whether the SNS informal information exchange system built new relationships between international and Japanese students and whether it contributed to the internationalization of the university.

In communities of practice, it is important for the members to share and learn knowledge and skill necessary for carrying out the authentic activities. However, such knowledge and skill could be often embedded in the context of the activities, and could not be sharable for the members. In this paper, we address the issue of how to represent and structure knowledge obtained from research activities within a lab in universities. Our approach to this issue is to provide each research member with Hyperblog that enables him/her not only to use Blog for representing his/her knowledge as blog entries but also to share the blog entries gathered from other members. This paper demonstrates a Hyperblog system that structures the Blog entries with three types of tags, which are system-defined, user-defined, and group-defined tags. This paper also describes a case study with the system. The results indicate the possibility that the system facilitates representing and structuring Blog entries.