Academic Networking is the New Social Networking for the classroom

The article on edutopia.org supplies an article elaborating on the benefits that networking can bring to the classroom. It is a great way to bring the students together through technology so that they can collaborate and share ideas and resources that they come across. A concept that we learn in our EDU classes is that the students do not only learn from the teacher, but they learn from eachother as well.
"We need to teach students how to be effective collaborators in that world, how to interact with people around them, how to be engaged, informed twenty-first-century citizens." This is a quote found in the article that describes the goal of academic networking. Students need to learn how to use each other as a stepping stone to gaining more knowledge on a variety of topics. When people think of networking, the sites Facebook and Twitter come to mind, but that is more for social interaction than academic. The article mentions the website, Delicious, which allows the students to share with each other resources that they use to help them with projects and other assignments. This reminds me a lot of what our Block has on Facebook, even though the idea is to veer away from that site. We use that page as a resource for when one of us gets into a bind and we need support and ideas. Students should have access to something like this to make them stronger students. 
If a website like this is integrated into the curriculum, it will require supervision from the teacher to make sure the students use the networking appropriately. This is where the concepts we have been learning in Kim K's class some in handy. We need to explain what we as the teacher expect from the students when they are on the site. Make our demands short and simple so that there is no confusion in the classroom. I think the effort needed is worth it because the students can really benefit from having access to a networking website.