Friday, June 12, 2009

Elgg - An Educational Social Networking Software

Overview 
Elgg, originally developed by Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh in 2004, released its Version 1.0 on August 18, 2004. This social networking software allow the user to post and create blogs, establish network communities, collect news using feeds aggregation and share files.

With the release of Elgg 1.5, one can now monitor comprehensively one's own actions alongside friends' actions in the site. One great added feature is that one can control the actions through the filtering system that Elgg provides - one can choose to only include particular tools of kinds of actions.

This software is one of the easiest to use when developing a social networking site. It comes with a set of default outline fields that the site administrator can broaden or completely alter depending on the needs of the site or the site users. Users can choose from a wide array of available widgets using Elgg's widget structure, to develop a full profile.

Additional functionality

Like some sites, you can monitor what and how your friends are doing through notifying them. What's good with Elgg is that you can choose that notification method that you feel is suited for your social networking site. Aside from being able to control or manage the activities or actions that you want to subscribe (yours and your friends'), you can have the subscriptions delivered to your friends using the notification method you are most comfortable with. You can opt to send an email, send an internal message, or send an SMS (which is offered by Curverider). Other methods can also be added through plugins.

Elgg relating to the education sector

Being one student-friendly social networking softwares to use, this software has captured a lot of attraction from education institutions such as University of Brighton (Community@Brighton), Claremont Graduate University (Claremont Conversation), University of Leeds (Leeds Elgg), University of Sao Paulo (Stoa), Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Hawaii Tokai International College (HTTC), Oregon State University (Beaversource Social), among others. This software is also being used in academic research by these institutions and other collaborating organizations to support its researchers.

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