Education and Social Networking

Each generation goes in and out of the school system with new methods of learning and teaching. For my generation we were one of the firsts to learn to use the computer and internet to do proper research. For kids nowadays their skills are going to be well diverse, especially in the art of social networking. It’s not uncommon for kids as young as 11 to have MySpace’s or Facebook accounts even though legally they are not supposed to do so (It will only be to soon before they start developing twitter accounts as well. ). Its seems that with how these kids are starting to use social media the school system should be developing ways to keep up and keep engaging the kids. Well. Luckily for the good of their education and the future of our country someone has taken notice. New methods are starting to develop like educational networking and school systems are starting to test out how to use social networking sites like Facebook and twitter to benefit what is going on in the classroom.

While researching for this blog I found that many educators have taken to online forums to figure out how to use social media and social networking in their classrooms. There are websites devoted to interviews and forum discussion with people giving different suggestions on how to use sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even Skype.

One program that seemed to have a good following was Classroom 2.0. This was founded by Steve Hargadon, who after seeing the benefits of Web 2.0 is trying to figure out a beneficial way to bring it into the classroom. The website has forums discussions, interviews with researchers on the social networking in the future and links to other websites that are using social networking in networking …

One website that I found after clicking around on Classroom 2.0 was Epals. This is an educational networking website that currently hosts over 13 million members.  They have a general rubric for classrooms all over the globe to use. There are set lesson plans, for example they have a black history lesson they you can customize for your grade (the website is for k-12) The cool thing about this is that it is all online. Once a teacher sets up a classroom online each student sets up an account and they can do lessons, tests, and projects online. Its possible to friend classmates and other students in the program across the globe. It is also beneficial to teachers because Epals makes it possible to connect with another classroom to go through lessons plans together. What better way to learn than to do it with a partner?

As I was looking around the discussion boards for teachers on Epals, I saw that many educators were trying to connect with other classrooms across the states and even across the globe. There were teachers from France and Portugal trying to find an American class to use Skype with to help their students improve their English speaking skills, as well as American classrooms using Skype to learn about other cultures.

Facebook is also starting to take advantage of how its site is used with the Courses on Facebook application. This application is for high school and college aged students and teachers and host similarities to Blackboard. Once a student gets the app they can register the classes they are taking and then they can have class discussions. It’s possible for teachers to post the syllabus, activities and links to other websites. This application is a great example of “bringing the mountain to Moses” so to speak. What better way to get students to keep up with work than to put it on something that they are already apart of.

But is all this transformation to social networking going to be good for students? Will it make things harder on teachers? What will we need to do to modify regulations if kids as young as Kindergarten are going to know some specifics of social networking?

Social networking has become so integrated in our culture that it is changing the way we communicate. It seems already that many, if not most, college age students know how to use the basics in computers and will know how to use email and web messaging to communicate. We however were lucky enough to grow up with skills in personal communication as well. While doing projects online and letting children learn about computers that way is great, after a while will they ever learn to get off the computer? It’s already hard enough to pull the 4^th graders I teach of the computer because of the educational social networking site we use, KIdBiz3000. How good are these kids personal skills going to be when they get older if what most of what they are learning is online. It seems like this could take a wrong turn and we could be raising a generation of anti-social “mole people”. I know that may seem a little extreme but with how technology is advancing this could be our future.

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~ by kendrastewart on March 17, 2010.