Thanks for the Add. Now Help Me with My Homework
By Michael BlandingOn the other hand, there are other social networking tools that may be more directly appropriate for use in class. Some teachers are already using wikis, technology that allows students to take turns editing group projects to facilitate the often-difficult task of working together as a group, as well as to provide a trail of who does what on a project. Another new social networking site called Ning.com allows organizations to create their own closed networking sites that can be adapted for a school or even a course.
A more likely use of SNSs within the educational context, however, is to use them as supplements to the formal in-class learning, building upon the spontaneous sharing that students are already doing. “I can imagine teachers saying, ‘I know a lot of you are on Facebook; I’d love to encourage you to share your draft work with friends, do whatever revisions are warranted, and then post your first draft on the class website,’” says Wiske. “That would be a design that took advantage of some affordances and patterns of behavior Christine is noticing without trying to commandeer these social networks as a location for structured class work.”
In addition to being a supplement to a particular class, Greenhow says that these sites can be used for a whole school to help facilitate social interaction and create bonds among students. Some schools — mostly at the college level — are beginning to take steps to foster this interaction. The State University of New York in Plattsville, for example, recently created a Facebook application that allows new and current students to interact through a trivia game about the school. Harvard just produced a Facebook application called H-Link that allows users to find students online who are taking the same courses, so they can network and form study groups. Meanwhile, the Ed School has created an alumni group on another site, LinkedIn, and is exploring use of Facebook to foster additional connections. Perhaps even more important than the impact of social networking on the classroom, however is the impact that the classroom can have on social networking, by teaching students how to be responsible “digital citizens” online. At their most basic level, these sites can be launching points to discussions on Internet ethics. “If we want kids to be digital citizens, we must model that behavior for them,” says Greenhow. As it stands now, however, most schools do the exact opposite, actively discouraging student use of social networking sites by blocking them on school computers — sending the message that they are dangerous or inappropriate. As Wiske says, “A lot of people can do a lot of damage driving cars, but we shouldn’t tell kids not to drive cars.”
It’s not ethics that can be taught on the web, however. Educators studying social networking sites are just beginning to develop ways to use them to teach social issues. Indeed, the biggest gift of social networking sites is the same thing that makes them such a danger — the immediate ability to interact with so many strangers so different from themselves. “A lot of social justice depends on acknowledging the legitimacy of someone else having the same rights as you do,” says Dede. “If it turns out that, gee, people very different than me are also very like me in some ways, that doesn’t automatically lead to a respect for others, but it can help with that and with a skilled teacher building those connections.”
If teachers are going to successfully build those connections, Greenhow suggests, they must take a page from social networking sites themselves and allow student to take an active part in the discussion. “The more we understand about what motivates and engages youth to use these technologies in their everyday lives,” she says, “the more we will be able to build on what they are learning in school, so they are developing the 21st century competencies that we value, and colearning or coconstructing their own educational experience.”
– To access Greenhow’s study, go to www.cgreenhow.org.
– Michael Blanding is a freelance writer whose last piece in Ed. looked at race in the classroom.
