Today, developments in Information Technology have maximised possibilities to learn in a variety of ways. Classroom walls have been blown away by e-learning and virtual conferencing, and technology affects every aspect of our lives. Social networking is now a significant feature of modern life. Social networking sites have been growing in popularity over the last seven years particularly. No longer frowned upon, membership of sites such as Myspace has grown almost unbelievably. But as with all things internet-related, there are risks and issues surrounding social networking sites. Cyber bullying is a major issue. Other issues can include identity theft and even people becoming obsessed with sites and therefore addicted to them.

Virtual conferencing is quite a new phenomenon that is now within reach of many classrooms. What many people may not have a clear idea of, is how it all impacts on learning. Many schools around the world use virtual conferencing, but does it greatly change how students work? Our class, in a recent virtual conferencing project with an Australian school, investigated this, as well as many other aspects of virtual conferencing. We (two of us from WEGC) formed a group with two Australian students from Warrandyte High, and created this webzine which investigates and compares the social networking habits between our schools, explores the pros and cons of Web2, and reflects on our experience of virtual conferencing. We started off communicating through email, with typical introductions, before progressing onto Skype and Elluminate. From there we began sending out surveys, collecting results and building our webzine together, using our evaluations from past technology projects to guide us along, throughout the project.

Ackowledgements for any images found on this webzine can be found here.