CREATION AND ANALYSIS OF PURPOSE DRIVEN ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS – APPLICATION TO PARENTS OF GIFTED CHILDREN
Open Access
Author:
Rai, Atisha
Graduate Program:
Industrial Engineering
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
None
Committee Members:
Soundar Rajan Tirupatikumara, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Keywords:
purpose driven social network online social networks gifted children
Abstract:
Gifted children are the powerful young minds that, if nourished, could one day cure leukemia or stop global warming or become the next Einstein. However these young and brilliant minds need careful nurturing to reach their full potential. Unfortunately this is not the case; American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded but spending on the gifted isn't even tabulated in some states. By the most generous calculation, the government spends no more than $800 million on gifted programs. The failure to recognize the need to provide the necessary infrastructure for the gifted is resulting in squandered potential. To bring about change, we believe it is necessary to spread awareness among the parents and to also allow them to connect with each other and have a forum to discuss their issues. To facilitate this we propose to build an online social network for parents of gifted children. We will be also analyzing the network structures of ‘purpose-driven’ online social networks similar to the one we are designing and comparing it with the network structure of a ‘pure’ online social network. This will allow us to check if there is any difference in the two types of network structures and therefore ensure that the applications and search engine used in the online social network for parents of gifted children takes advantage of its network structure and provides better performance.