social networks and education

Having this week joined quite literally about seven websites, I now find myself in the position of being rather more connected to the world around me than I ever really wanted to be. Not that I mind it excessively. It's helpful to be able to reach people in so many different quick and easy ways. For the quick spread of information the internet is infinitely superior to the mere efforts of telephones or, more primitive yet, face to face conversation.
For education purposes the mass of knowledge that can be gleaned from these networks is certainly useful. Students can more easily and quickly connect to each other in mass to share their struggles and revelations in their studies, and the instructor can spread messages and get in touch with all of his students quickly. Although, on the other hand, an online conversation of 1-2 sentences bounced back and forth can take hours, when it might have only taken fifteen minutes and been more thoroughly accomplished in a simple phone call or face to face discussion.
I certainly will not deny the benefits of being able to have quick access to people and information on the internet. I very much appreciate my email and am starting to be accepting of the facebook account that I put off for so long. But all the same, I personally have never really felt the need to be connected to my fellow man at all times. I don't really think anybody cares about what precisely I'm doing at 4:39 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. I may be reading, I may be sleeping, I may be skydiving. If you're that interested, ask and I will tell you. I think it is a shame that we lose some of that personal connection over the internet. Seeing words of encouragement on a computer screen are not the same thing as hearing them in person.
So in the end, I suppose that social networks are useful in education for means of communication and research. Beyond that, I don't think that they really have much of a place in our education system.