The purpose of this paper is to analyze the importance of forums and networks in Distance Education processes from the view of an ethically distribution of knowledge.

Assuming that nowadays knowledge represents the main competitive advantage, owning knowledge becomes increasingly a source of power and knowledge management represents one of the major challenges modern society is facing. Creating, assembling and exploiting knowledge constitute the foundation of cultural and social expansion and economic growth. This calls attention to underlying some ethical issues involved in the production and the use of knowledge as a power source, as well as chanels for dissemination.
Education is the key factor in the distribution of knowledge. The changes in today’s society challenge us to find new ways to produce and share knowledge.
Distance education could be one of the devices used to distribute knowledge ethically. How could we integrate knowledge through distance education? Could Social Networks be used as a knowledge distribution channel in Distance Education?

The changes of today’s society challenge us to find ways to produce and distribute knowledge. Using Social Networks in education may be a way of ensuring it. Knowledge is the main resource in today’s industrialized societies. Owning knowledge becomes increasingly a source of power. However, since more advantaged social groups have easier access to knowledge and consequently to power, the management of knowledge also raises ethical questions.

One way of facilitating an ethical distribution of knowledge is to use Social Networks in education. Assuming that all knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit knowledge, socially conveyed knowledge blends with the experience of reality of the individual and tacit and explicit knowledge interact with and interchange into each other in the creative activities of human beings. The using of SNS in education may be a way to improve the transfer of tacit knowledge, as knowledge is created and expanded with social interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge.
Social interaction between individuals is the basic requirement for creating, cumulating and transferring this type of knowledge. The amount of knowledge transfer increases when social and cultural exchanges increases among individuals.
But what about moving forward and beyond the using of technology only through universities’ campuses, and trying to learn by using Social Networks? Much like a personal computer’s desktop, the Social Networks provides a personal workspace for organizing, storing, and accessing files, and an environment for running applications. The Social Networks also provide the ability to create groups, and for each group to have a “group desktop” for file sharing, communication, and collaboration. Because it is Web-based, teachers and students can access their workspaces from any computer that can access the Web, and partners (parents or mentors) unable to participate in schools because of time or distance, can participate in the Internet-based workspace.

We want to provide an insight into participant’s interest for learning in virtual environment and for using forums and different types of social networks on the purpose of learning. Results of survey among Slovenian and Romanian undergraduate students are presented and in our discution we make some suggestions about using Social Networks in education, particulary on Distance Education.