Beyond Facebook: Social Networking and Learning

Facebook!

        That's pretty much all you need to do to get someone's attention these days. Between business and public organizations staking out Facebook spaces for interactive and promotional purposes, and just about everybody's family gathering there, it's become the “new Google” – a place you can search and find almost anything.
        The enthusiasm has generated a great deal of interest in educational circles as well, since the platform at least implies a user-driven (i.e. student-driven) learning paradigm, with further implications for collaboration and group knowledge construction. As a result, a lot of districts are examining whether it is really appropriate to block Facebook within a school district's wide area network. The pivotal word, as always, is “implies.” How does one best leverage this sort of thing for instructional purposes? Some of the ways are obvious. If you establish groups of “friended” students, then they can discuss, work, and share in the pursuit of any learning projects.
        Of course, “how” also implies “where” – that is, should we be using Facebook itself to translate “implies” to “supports?” There are severe challenges associated with using an extremely popular platform like Facebook for school-based instructional purposes. Since students (and teachers, for that matter) are already using it for personal purposes, there are massive numbers of distractions. And, of course, there's a lot of content which won't be appropriate for students (an issue which doesn't have a consistent and uniform standard across K-12). There's another problem as well. Facebook, as an extension of other social networking tools kids leverage (texting, instant messaging, Twitter, forums and bulletin boards), has its own learned pattern of common usage, including Internet slang, and inappropriate language and images. These behaviors spread virally through social networking platforms. Using the platforms for education requires that teachers and technology coordinators counter these patterns, since they'll work against the educational goals of a teacher. In the face of this battle, many teachers will be overwhelmed, and will abandon social networking as an instructional tool.
        Of course, the viral nature in which use patterns and behaviors disseminate through social network-like systems can be leveraged to promote appropriate use. But a new study (mentioned by educational technology observer Ian Jukes on his 21^st Century Fluency Project blog) shows that, in fact, “viral” spreading of behaviors is a much more powerful resource when the community in which social networking is taking place is, in fact, a “clustered network,” a network in which all of the players know each other: “…social behaviors may spread more quickly in a clustered network…[since] the redundancy created by multiple ties between individuals close to each other in the network will reinforce the diffusion of the behavior.”
        Such attention to connections is implied by the idea of “learning communities,” another concept associated with the same underlying ideas as social networks. As many professional development programs have discovered (both within and outside of education), online learning communities designed to support a specific audience with a specific professional goal have a much better chance if they are built on the foundation of an existing learning community, usually with ties to face-to-face interaction such as you find within school faculties, content area groups, or other face-to-face meeting groups. Those are the “clustered networks” mentioned by the research.
       The implication is that, for students to learn through social networking, they'll need to be in a closed environment which leverages other, pre-existing networks. In a school, a classroom may or may not represent such a network (my own research has shown that not all classmates feel connected to each other), but that is only one of several “clusters” a school might deliver, or create. With such multiple connections, behavior change, appropriate use, as well as community building and collaboration, have a great deal better chance of happening. There are dozens of tools districts can use as closed and connected network platforms. In Fayette County, we're using an open source tool, Mahara, to support pre-existing “clusters,” teach appropriate use of social networking in general, and support knowledge construction in a variety of ways, including the sharing of e-portfolios. Already, students, through their connections and teacher leadership, have stepped up to share and encourage each other's appropriate use.
        The promise of this way of connecting and learning need not be associated with a single platform such as Facebook. As a matter of fact, the possibility of student-driven learning and behavior change may very well be hamstrung by the use of an environment with so much competing baggage. But that doesn't diminish the power of the underlying paradigm.

Social networking!

If you build it...will they come?

        Ray Kinsella heard and repeated it (through the person of Kevin Costner in the movie "Field of Dreams"): "If you build it, he will come." He built it, and, sure enough, Shoeless Joe Jackson and a dozen other deceased baseball players showed up to play ball there. The implication is that all it takes is to construct something, and magical things will suddenly happen. With the beginning of another fiscal school year, dozens of teachers and administrators are gearing up to chase the same dream. All they need is "Smart" boards for all their math teachers, two new mobile laptop "labs" for the Language Arts teachers, digital camcorders for Social Studies...and student learning will increase.
       Sometimes it even works. You build a new park, and crime in the surrounding neighborhood drops. You purchase new team uniforms, and the team starts winning. But, statistically, a drop in crime, or a winning season -- all other things being equal -- are no more likely with new things as with old. A team wins because it plays better than its opponents. New uniforms may encourage a team to try harder, but it's their play that'll make them a winner. Besides, any effect realized by the purchase of new things wears off quickly with time. Change simply isn't that easy.
        Beginning with the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow research over 25 years ago, education technology has been pushed as a vehicle, a metaphor for education reform and improvement. After all, online computers can do some very amazing things: they can extend a content discussion between students (and anyone else) across space and time. Real time conferencing tools can bring experts, artists, community members into the classroom, without anyone getting into a car. Students can turn a test into a learning device through machine-delivered instant feedback and hyperlinked support resources. Teachers can incorporate anonymous student responses to questions into an interactive lesson in real time, and in the process, generate data to guide instruction on the fly. It all seems like a no-brainer, like all we need to do it build it, and "he will come" -- the scores will magically rise.
        In fact, our classrooms these days already have a lot of these instructional tools -- almost all have digital displays, teachers invariably have a computer on which they can create materials and resources, and students have access to all kinds of hardware, including digital camcorders and cameras, online information resources, and classroom- and online-delivered interactive assessment tools. "Smart classroom" tools are becoming more common as well. We have, in many cases, already built it. And sometimes it helps. But for most, many of the same challenges remain: students still are disengaged, test scores fail to rise, and classrooms remain dysfunctional and disrupted. What's happening?.More importantly, why should we bother?

        At a recent visit to a district with a heavy commitment to 1-1 computing (all students are issued laptops as they enter high school), the chief information officer advised those present that test scores should not be the reason to commit to such a program. Such a program is important because it prepares students for the environments they will encounter in the world beyond high school. It is about relevance and student engagement, delivering experiences which engage students "where they are." These are all extremely valid points.

       What caught my eye during the presentation was the word "engagement," and its implications for student motivation and commitment. If the promise of technology tools is that students are better engaged and motivated, then increased scores should, in fact, be the result. But "engagement" and "relevance" aren't just tied to tools. They're tied to behaviors. The presence of powerful tools does not correct the disconnect between how students learn outside of school, and how they learn at school. Only teachers can do that. Those "new uniforms" can provide some interest, but that interest simply will not last. Chances are, if a teacher is using the new tools to implement the same lockstep, teacher-driven, low level pedagogical practices they used before the tools arrived, the results will be no increase in engagement, motivation, and test scores. If, alternatively, a teacher truly embraces the ability of these tools to promote and support student-driven and connected learning, extending the classroom across space, time, and knowledge levels, the results can be magical.
       Yes, it is critical that we place the tools students are already using outside of school in their hands while we have them. But as schools chase tech dollars, if they propose nothing else, the results will most likely be disappointing -- either they won't get their money, or the money won't do what they hoped it would. Teachers can't simply "build it," they much change their practice to better realize the promise of powerful tools. Technology implies change, but it isn't change in itself. We can only improve our effectiveness as educators if we change what we, and our students, do, in the classroom and beyond.