Is social networking good for education?

I've asked this question dozens of times, usually after seeing some horrible news story. But this article sheds some light on the subject, with some surprising results. Read the story here.

Wikipedielection

As I was looking around for sites to use in my 2008 Presidential Election project, I thought about where my students could get information. Naturally in an election year there's no shortage of websites dedicated to the subject, but they all have one thing in common: 99.9% of my students would never visit them if I hadn't made them.

Then there's Wikipedia. I know from the number of poorly-plagiarized essays and papers I have received in recent years that my students are well aware of Wikipedia's existence. Therefore, they know how to use it. So why not capitalize upon that as a teacher?

So, when my students feign complete ignorance of what Wikipedia is and how wikis work, I'll show them...once. After that, I'll pull out my file of confiscated essays by John Q. Wikipedia.

Phoneblogosphere

Everytime I make mention of how technology can be used in school, I never fail to get some variant of the following question:

"But what about the students who don't have computers at home? What can we do for them?"

While I acknowledge that there are probably some students in my classes who don't have their own computers, I can't think of a single one who doesn't have a cellphone. In fact, I would be willing to bet that more than 75% of their communication with everyone they know (and probably some they don't) occurs over a cellphone in one way or another. Whether they're talking or texting, they are definitely doing it through their own cellphone.

And now that they all have access to the internet via their phones, they use them to post blogs as well. My friend who is teaching a summer course assigned his students a project that included the posting of blogs. Remember, this is summer school; most of his students are there because they couldn't remember to do their homework during the schoolyear when it is cold and rainy and there's really nothing else to do. So what are the chances they can remember to do them when it's summer and there are a plethora of other distractions.

No problem! At the beginning of class one day he reminded the students that today they had 3 blog posts that were due. He had checked that morning and no more than a handful of students had posted anything, so he wasn't surprised that his announcement was met with a widening of eyes and the dropping of jaws. However, as soon as the bell rang for lunch (and in some cases before) cellphones appeared out of pockets and purses, and, with fingers flying, students filed outside typing their little fingers off. You can probably guess the rest: when he checked the blog site at the end of the class, all but a few of the students had posted the requisite blogs.

I know this isn't the usual post about how technology should be used in the classroom. But I thought it should be pointed out how students, free from any instruction from us teachers, are using technology in the classroom. Or right outside of it, during lunch.

Facebook Election

Michael was good enough to send me a site that might help enrich my telecollaboration project. I've already managed to use the internet through webpages (my own as well as several others) and blogging. Now I can have them use Facebook for something school-related!


Here's what he sent me:

Are your students more concerned with the latest news on Facebook than what’s going on in class?

What if you could merge classroom content with Facebook to teach your students in an like never before? To reach students in an unprecedented way, the National Constitution Center and Scholastic Inc. have partnered to create Exchange This ’08, the first and only Facebook application that allows students to voice their opinions and gather information about the important issues in the upcoming presidential election.

Exchange This ’08 provides summaries of the issues and then has students compare each issue to determine what issues are most important to students in this election season. Student’s votes will be collected and compiled to create the Student Agenda for the 2008 election, which will be shared with both presidential candidates this fall. Have your students add the Exchange This ’08 application by going to http://apps.facebook.com/exchangethis .

Exchange This ’08 is part of The Exchange: A Marketplace of Student Ideas, a national student program created by the National Constitution Center and held three times a year. On September 23, 2008, the election-themed series of Exchange programs will come to a close with Creating the Student Platform,
where students will deliberate the issues on the Student Agenda and create policy statements for each of the issues. If you would like more information about having your students take part in the Exchange, please visit http://www.constitutioncenter.org/ncc_edu_TheExchange.aspx

I'll find a way to dovetail this into my project, since it is planned to last from the week after school starts straight through the election. Thanks again, Mike!

Podcasting: telecommuting for teachers?

Recently I was travelling up the coast to see some friends. While I was happy to visit them, I did lament the fact that I would be missing "The Greaseman" as well as other radio personalities to whom I listen regularly. A friend of mine reminded me when I came back that most shows are podcasted on the internet, and as such they are usually archived on the sites so I could go and hear what I thought I had missed.

Half of the people I know telecommute at least a couple of days a week. Just a week ago our own Ken Ulman announced that a lot of the county government's workers were going to be able to telecommute in response to the high cost of driving to work. They made a point of stating that teachers would still be required to drive to work everyday.

Does that make sense to anybody? If so, can they please explain it to me? After all, with podcasting, we could spend all summer recording our lectures (or just record them during one year, and use those recordings until they need to be updated)and have students e-mail us assignments that we could grade at home. I can't be the first person to come up with this idea, as evidenced by this story.

I know, I know: we do way more than just lecture in the classroom. But as long as the technology exists, let's make it work for us.

Social Networking Sites

Amazing how technology can make an inherently personal practice into an impersonal one. Don't get me wrong, in the past few months that I've spent examining social networking sites I have come to realize that there is no lack of personal information being flung about in the ether. But it does lack a certain "humanity" when you realize that all of one's information about life, love, careers, interests, and accomplishments can be distilled into ones and zeroes, printed in what is essentially magnetic ink. And the fact that it is all accessable to any determined 5th grader with a computer and what amounts to a lifetime spent online (yes, I imagine a 5th grader has been online as much as a 36 year-old like myself) with little regard for how the original poster had intended that information to be used. If there was ever a "Caveat Emptor" needed, plainly labelled in huge red letters, there should be one on these sites. Oddly enough, there's not.

I have both a MySpace page as well as a Facebook page. I was petitioned by friends to make them so that we could keep in touch. However, as interesting as my life has been, I found myself struggling to decide what information to post on these sites. After all, while my exploits are interesting to me, I somehow doubt that my diatribe on airline food vs. hospital food would interest even the most bored sycophantic admirer.

But what possible educational purpose can these sites have? In an earlier post I mentioned the deluge of e-mails I get over the summer regarding our SGA. I attended an officer's meeting yesterday (see? It's still summer and I'm still doing this stuff!) and advised them to put together a MySpace or Facebook page so we didn't have to drive for miles to meet every week, especially when gas is so expensive. Besides, as summer winds down, we need to talk more than just weekly if we're to get anything done, so the networking site makes much more sense. I hope they take my advice, because I'm all meeting-ed out.

Students & Blogging

It seems like everytime I turn around, there's a new way to communicate being invented. It was like that in the Army, when I saw the transition from radios to computers as the primary means of communication (to this day there really are no secure cell phones). Now the technology is so pervasive and transitioning so quickly, you can't avoid it. All communication with students used to happen in the classroom. If they missed a class, they had to wait until the next time the class met in order to catch up. That is no longer the case.

Even e-mail is becoming passe'. Now if you want information quickly, you have to master the art of blogging. Simple enough: start a blog page (as I've obviously done, since you're reading this now), pick a topic, and begin your rant. The main difference with blogging and e-mailing is that the blog gives you a broader audience, which is ideal if you want 30 students to have access to what's on your mind at any given time.

My wife (another teacher/glutton for punishment) started her blog over a year ago when I was deployed overseas. Thousands of miles from home, I used to read the blogs she wrote for her class just to experience what was going on in her life when I didn't have a letter from home to read. True, it wasn't the same as a love letter, but it was still her words and that was good enough. Here's her site: http://www.dcallender.blogspot.com/
As you can see, she uses it primarily to communicate what's going on in her class to students, but it also serves to communicate with parents. She's obviously learned that accountability is a double-edged sword: students don't always tell their parents what they have to do for homework or what they did in class. She has given forgetful students a second chance to check for assignments, and parents a chance to confirm or deny their child's claims that they have no homework. Before the blog, she was often forced to play "student said/teacher said". That is no longer an issue. I'll use mine the same way, although my site will not be quite so pink.

So that's the teacher's take on how to use blogs. Students will obviously read it, and post any questions that they and other students might have. Since I'm an SGA sponsor, I'm constantly deluged with e-mails, even during the summer. I'll probably suggest that the SGA officers start a blog page so we can relieve our e-mail in-boxes from some of the ongoing e-conversations that have plagued us this past year. I might begin to take a more passive role in the communications with the officers: I can supervise and chime in when guidance is needed, but the students can handle the rest through blogging.