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Nearly five years ago, this November, our daughter had heart surgery. It was not surgery we had planned for. In many ways, it turned our world upside down. Because we were at Children's Hospital in Vancouver, we were four hours from home and suddenly needed to remain for a week or possibly longer. Our need to be able to communicate easily with family, friends and work was immense. We had access to the internet and a computer at the hospital for brief periods of time, and sent out regular email updates. At the time, we considered ourselves lucky that we had a way of keeping everyone up to speed on her condition, without having to start a phone tree. The cyber frontier has certainly changed in five short years. In many ways, it's turned the whole world upside down, but as the Youtube video you're about to see demonstrates, thanks to social networking, we've turned upside down with it.
Who are you and how do I know you?
When the buzz about Facebook hit critical mass in the media, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. Facebook was easy to get started in. I created a profile, added a picture and started looking for people I knew. Initially, there weren't many people I knew who were my age, but within a year my entire family was involved, mostly to see pictures of the children and find out what was happening without spending half an hour on the phone. Within two years, I was linking to stories I found interesting to share with colleagues and friends, and I could see that using Facebook at school could be a great way to keep in touch with my students. However, before I "friended" any of my students, I started hearing warnings about the perils of having students as friends. I was pretty naive. I hadn't considered that I really didn't want to know about their drunken partying and the accompanying images. I did however, let students know that after they had graduated, I'd be happy to be friends on Facebook. I have found safe ways to increase my professional profile. I didn't really want to have two accounts (one personal and one professional, which my husband has done), but I've created a page for my school and work at trying to encouraging people to let me know about events so things can be posted, thereby increasing the school's visibility among students, international students who have returned to their home country and alumni. This type of outreach has also begun to have financial benefits, as a local group has begun fundraising for high school extra-curricular programs through the alumni for each school. I still find Facebook mostly a social thing and somewhat distracting. Like most people of my generation, I'm still most comfortable with the relative privacy and faster use of email. Facebook is just too darn slow to navigate through, sometimes, thanks to the distraction factor.
One of my greatest concerns about Facebook, is the nature of how teens use this (and other) social sites. It has only been a month and a half since a video of a gang-rape of a teenage girl at a rave was passed around to many students in B.C. thanks to Facebook. The subsequent discussions about the ethics of passing along this type of video and the indifference to the girl's plight has infuriated me and many other adults. "Kick a ginger" and other "hate" days created through Facebook continue to thrive in middle school culture. Social networks have taken bullying to a whole new level. Rather than ban social networks outright from schools, though, it makes a great deal of sense to be more involved. The less adults know about what is occuring, the greater the chance the bullying will continue. I dread the day when my son asks to start a Facebook account, but I know that by being his "friend," I'll be able to monitor what is happening.
Edmodo
Perhaps the educational solution to Facebook is Edmodo. While the layout will look familiar to Facebook users, the private nature of the site might encourage a more thoughtful use of the site. I set up a group fairly quickly once I had logged in. I also liked that it posted my name as Mrs. McVittie, which is what students would expect to see. It requires a group to send invitations to, but I don't really have something like that at my fingertips, particularly a group that needs an assignment. I'll have to get a colleague to explore this more, but I found my husband's observations to be rather interesting. He looked at it and wondered why teachers would use this at the secondary level, when Facebook already exists. Students will still prefer Facebook and having looked at the tools linked to the site, they appear to be rather limited, so as a tool for educational purposes, it looks to be rather limited. He decided that there were better tools out there and dismissed it rather quickly. Knowing my colleagues, I suspect they would do the same, as they want to use tools that will connect students through the tools we already have at our fingertips. Why reinvent the wheel?
Micro-blogs: Twitter as Educational Tool
When I began my Twitter account, again based on the buzz that was happening in the media, I was excited, but quickly frustrated. I had lots of tweets streaming to me, but not lots of people that I knew. I found the lingo of the site amusing and selected tweet streams that were recommended. I rather hoped that the one or two celebrities that I chose would post something interesting that I wouldn't normally read on the front cover of a tabloid. I really wasn't interested in building up a vanity tally of people following me, nor did I want to follow lots of people in whom I had no interest. Because I had to click on links and rely on what I was being told, I found it a little frustrating. Because the people I was following were mostly marketers, I found the links a waste of my time. While it was interesting to hear how Twitter was being used politically by young adults (successfully or not), I didn't hear much about it at my school. When I asked my Web CT students whether they found Twitter useful, most didn't have an account and those that did never really used it. Facebook remained their preference.
Since the start of this course, however, Twitter has become much more useful. Because I am following ed tech micro-bloggers and people whose regular blogs I also follow, I am more interested in what they have to share and what they link to. I almost always find the comments and links interesting. I've also started to enjoy the use of hash-marks, but they can be a little depressing. I was trying to tweet while attending the BC Teacher Librarians Conference in Kelowna in October and no one else was sharing. I was suprised,and frankly disappointed to be the only person sharing the great bits of information from Dr. Jamie McKenzie. I know I'll keep using this and will probably increase my use of this tool, particularly after I get my new smartphone in a few weeks. Having the right tools to microblog really helps!
I can't see student use of Twitter increasing, unless an educator sets up a process similar to this course. Micro-blogging only becomes beneficial when you follow other bloggers and have links and comments on events that you think your followers would be interested in. In terms of developing a Personal Learning Network (PLN), this could become the fastest tool to work with, as long bandwidth issues don't get in the way. On the morning that Premier Gordon Campbell resigned, I could not get onto Twitter due to the number of users and tweets occuring simultaneously. For students who might be excited about a major event (Me 2 We comes to mind) lack of access would be enough to kill interest in the tool. I think it will be a while until my son uses this and even my nephews might not find this particularly useful as a social tool, because their social networks are built around their phones and Facebook.
My Space
Of the big social networks, the least I knew about was MySpace, so I decided to check it out. I was stunned at how much user account information was easily accessible through the "browse" tab. Even more disturbing (from my perimenopausal, mom p.o.v.) were the nicknames and blatantly sexual images that users were posting. It was easy to find people in my immediate area, but I noted that the majority of members were in their early 20's, somewhat counter-culture and more interested in meeting people as a dating service. The ads on the site clearly focused on this aspect of MySpace as well. As an educational too, my initial judgment was that it would not be appropriate for a secondary school, let alone an elementary. Yet, I noticed, the local university had a page. Perhaps this is simply a social site more appropriate for an over-19 crowd, whereas Facebook has positioned itself as all-age friendly, and "social media continues to be age-graded." (Boyd, 2009.) This won't be a tool I'll be using, nor would I want to encourage my nephews or son to use it. It reminds me a great deal of the Edmonton-based social network, Nexopia, which also focuses on a dating and self-promotion culture. Nexopia received a number of negative media stories, based on the number of young teens who were posting sexually explicit photos and information with little regard for privacy settings.
Ning
Of all the social networks I had hope for as an educational tool, Nings appeared to be most useful. The privacy features and ability to be exclusive to a specific group made it appealing to me as an educator who wants to avoid grief with administration and parents. I love the Nings I belong to, but I have them set up to send me digests. They are a huge source of personal professional learning. The features of a Ning are excellent. The professional learning and networking is simple to do, but few people I know locally are involved and many of the things I read in my blog roll are here as well. Unfortunately, it's too expensive to create and put into place in a way that would be most beneficial for the classroom setting. For this reason, I can't see Nings growing in the educational field.
Yes, it's blocked. (SNS and Value in Education)
Ultimately, I agree with Will Richardson and Danah Boyd. Teaching about social networks is essential, but using social networks in the school setting is probably counter-productive. Students are too easily distracted in our current educational setting to focus on the learning, in my observations over the last two years. Social tools, on the other hand, are incredibly useful, which is why I like our school Moodle so much. It allows staff and students to work on wikis, blogs, forums, shared video content and podcasts, all within a secure setting. It's free and Linux-based, so that makes it more attractive to the cash-strapped education sector. The only draw-backs are the quality of some of the tools. (PhotoShop is a much better photo editing tool than GIMP, for example.) Is it a social network? No. While it includes sixteen of the listed features in Berger and Trexler's comparative chart of selected social networks, it misses out in the key elements of friends, instant messaging, badges and tags (among others). In an overview of Berger and Trexler's additional social networks, only Qlubb appeared to be most appropriate for the district in which I teach. At the classroom level, Qlubb would particularly useful for an elementary teacher who needs class help from parents or is organizing field trips. Because of Moodle, I have no need of forum creators or a site like Mixxit, which might be a good music site for emerging artists and teens who like hip-hop.The other sites recommended might be appropriate for linking to pre-existing websites on Windows or Mac operating systems.
Berger and Trexler also comment on the AASL standards and the social aspect of learning. This brought to mind a recent post in David Warlick's blog entitled "Are they students or are they learners?"
For educators and parents who see teens as students, the one big elephant in the room that needs some discussion is the negative side of social networks that keep Facebook, MySpace and other SNS blocked in schools. Student experimentation with social identity(sexting) and social power (cyberbullying) are all part of human development, to a certain degree. Educating teens about netiquette and appropriate use of technology is more effective than out-right bans, but few districts seem to be implementing curriculum around this topic. Our district hosted an international tech-ed conference last year and is still in the process of discussing board level policies banning MP3 players, phones, digital cameras from classrooms and every school in the province is carefully monitored by the Provincial Learning Network which oversees all the public school wide area networks (WAN) to ensure that districts are not opening up the provincial network to attack through viruses or hackers.
By Beercha http://www.flickr.com/photos/vendene/4285542155/
Conclusion
Social networks are woven into the lives of nearly all our students and the lives of many adults in North America. Learning to navigate socially within the networks hosted on the web adds a layer of social complexity to the lives of teenagers and young adults, which many are just beginning to realize as they learn about their digital footprint. If learners, as opposed to students, make meaning from the various aspects of their lives, then managing social networks will have to become part of the fabric of school curricula.
