questionnaire survey, students? ICT skills, ICT in education, interview, educational social networks

Instruction with the use of new media is being discussed at all school levels. Networking platforms, which include terms such as Social Network Sites, Web-based Learning Networks, Educational Social Network Sites, etc., are one of the major tools that meet the demands placed on innovative instructional activities in the online environment. These Web 2.0 tools bring new possibilities to education not only at the didactic level, but also at the relationship level. Not only do they encourage cooperation, they also enable sharing and new forms of synchronous and asynchronous communication. As far as primary education is concerned, especially private networks are used to ensure the safety of students by limiting their access in cyberspace. This paper is a partial outcome of a complex research project aimed at the implementation of social media into the primary school environment. The authors present the existing results of an empirical research on upperprimary school students in the Czech Republic, which were obtained through a questionnaire survey and an interview, respectively. The first part of the research is aimed at determining the level of the students? ICT skills, with an emphasis on their network and digital literacy, and the possibilities for the use of networking platforms in the education process. The second part of the research examines the stimuli that encourage interaction, i.e. sharing between two and more subjects in the network environment.