From Ewan McIntosh, Scotland national education technology adviser: "In Scotland, I've been fortunate to work with thousands of school children and hundreds of teachers, creating mini social networks based around a rather traditional 'social object': the classroom. Students have been empowered to publish not just their best work, but the many drafts it takes to get there. They've received feedback from 'real' people outside school and, surprisingly often, the occasional expert has paid a visit.... Importantly, they've received more communication, feedback and interest from the one group they value most: their parents."
US social media researcher danah boyd wrote a blog post about the debate, saying she's frustrated with both the debaters' opening arguments, giving her reasons and making this central point: "In their current incarnation, social network sites ... should not be integrated directly into the classroom. That said, they provide youth with a valuable networked public space to gather with their peers."
I don't think these three experts disagree, actually. My takeaway is that MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, etc. themselves - with their user-psychographic aggregation and commercial goals and with their users' purely social goals - don't belong in the classroom, but none of the arguments seem to rule out the educational "social networking" US teacher Vicki Davis has adapted for her Flat Classroom Project, which turns classrooms in multiple countries - 3 across the US and 4 classrooms in China, Austria, Australia, and Qatar - into their own learning social network. Don't miss Vicki's detailed description in her comment at the bottom of danah's blog page. Parents and educators alike would find the Flat Classroom Project (the name a take-off from author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat) an inspiration - see this blog post from Vicki's co-founder Julie Lindsay in Qatar, which includes an email exchange with Tom Friedman. For the perspective of young social networkers themselves, see this interesting blog post from UK tech educator Terry Freedman.
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Sicial Networking is a genius marketing tool, and in a situation like a gifted school program or a college study, I can see it being useful in the classroom. But typical teens in typical high schools don't give a rip about how it works and using it as a tool in a classroom would do nothing but cause huge distractions without large amounts of supervision and filtering, defeating the purpose.
ReplyDeleteJames @ www.techtipsforparents.org
I agree with Sue - you can't throw the baby out with the bath water. Not all social networking sites are "bad," just like all kids aren't bad (right? :-)). If there is a market, businesses / entrepreneurs will find it - wherever it may be. Myspace, Facebook, etc. are social networks, yes, and a place for targeting markets. I think the important thing to keep in mind is this: WHY are social networks important and / or popular? What need do they fulfill in the lives of students? If we DON'T use social networks, what are we (as educators) missing? I think that people / students who use social networking sites aren’t viewing themselves as looking for products but to NETWORK and CONNECT with people and the subtlety and secondary nature of marketing tools is a side note to the nature of the site – but isn’t that the “joy” of living in a market economy?
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