It's hard to deny the influences and changes of social networking sites in today's society. In the beginning, there was Xanga and LiveJournal, which I admit I used as an almost daily journal, shared with my other friends who had an account so we could read up on each others' almost daily happenings. In high school, nothing made me feel more important than seeing comments or replies to my online journal. (oh, to be in high school again...) I then realized that I'm really not that interesting, at least not interesting enough to maintain a journal that maybe only 5 people read. Then there was Friendster, which I never had personal experience with, but I can imagine was a basic version of MySpace, which soon followed. I did have a MySpace profile made for me (a friend of mine insisted I had one), and I did start using it on a regular basis, but then abandoned it once Facebook came out (now MySpace seems to be useful to Tom, Justin Timberlake, and underground musicians trying to get their material out there). Just as with Xanga and LiveJournal, Facebook was able to make users feel important enough to share things about themselves for anyone to stumble upon and maybe want to read about, and took MySpace's online profile sharing idea to a new level. After Facebook came Twitter, which I never really understood, yet the public takes Twitter as innovation for keeping in touch with people (as if a phone doesn't exist anymore). It makes celebrities believe that the public wants to know what they are doing every single minute of the day (not to name names, but I think we all know of an actor who rhymes with Shmashton Smutcher...), and gives the general public that same narcissistic hope as well. Since then, a whole mixing pot of social networking and sharing has come out, each with their own little twist. And though a lot of the websites have similar functions and outreaches, people still sign up for the new things that come out. Just like kids and Pokémon, we "gotta catch 'em all."
I only say these kinds of things because I, too, am among the many
who have more than one social networking account. I use Facebook for my
personal socializing, LinkedIn in hopes that someone from a public
school would stumble upon it, Twitter to update news about the capoeira
group I participate in, Pinterest to give me hope that I can make
awesome DIY things for the house and classroom, and so on. As the
number of subscribing people rises, the ages at which the people log on
gets lower. Facebook began with only logging in with a college e-mail,
but then was open to the general public, with the minimal age being 13
to hold an account.
With this saturation of social media, and the shift of account holders being younger and younger, educators are looking to embrace and incorporate these popular websites instead of denying the students of their usage. I can see the aim to make communication with school more relevant for the students and parents, and the possibilities of creating motivation and personal connections with projects that include web 2.0 tools, I still find dangers in using such accessible websites even with various filters and policies put into place by school administrators. Sites such as Facebook or online blog spaces may fall under the radar unless a school particularly blocks it from the school computers. They are not particularly meant to hold perverse material, but because of their accessibility, any user can post such content, which is not as easy to control. There are alternatives such as WikiSpaces, where the classroom has its own collaborative online space with privacy settings that the educator can monitor to control the outreach of the class WikiSpaces (only within the class, with other classes in the school, etc.). Instead of having a general blog that is open to the public, students can post their work on the class wiki, and get feedback. I think that using WikiSpaces would be a great way to update the Writer's Workshop in the classroom. The process of editing and revising is still there, but it could be done by more than one classmate per session. More feedback allows the writer with more information and options to use in the next draft of the piece.
What about a safe haven for communication and "social networking" in the educational environment? What about the classes that could use the resources, but the children are not at the level of creating their own work yet? What about the class families that would like the ease of communicating with social networking? Yes, it is possible to create a Facebook page for your classroom or school. In theory, this would be convenient if parents and other educators in the same school could consistently follow the updates from your page. However, it is quite possible for the updates of 1 classroom or 1 school to be lost among the updates of the rest of the user's friends; either it gets hidden, or it is read but then soon forgotten within a few minutes because of other Facebook input. After reading Lyanne Melendez's article "Teachers, students using social sites raises concerns," I learned of the education equivalent of Facebook, Edmodo. This kind of website gives the users a similar networking and updating experience as Facebook, but concentrated to the teacher, his or her classroom, and the parents of that classroom. The access and privacy settings are already in place, and the information that is posted is relevant and pertinent to that class. Other websites that could be shared from educator to class, or educator to classroom families are Diigo and Delicious, both which are ways to bookmark and store online resources related to your searches and interests. A teacher could share his or her online storage of resources used in class that pertains to the current unit or theme, and parents could look at them at home and possibly search for related resources within the website.
In the midst of all of the current and up-and-coming social networking websites out there, it is refreshing to see that there are networking resources that are being developed for a more purposeful use and can help avoid outside factors that are not easy to filter or control. I can foresee myself using websites such as Edmodo and Diigo as communication and sharing resources for my classroom in the future as an alternative to trying to control Facebook usage among my students.
P.S. I found a video that helps explains more of my thoughts from my previous blog entry.
