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 21st 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.
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 21st 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!
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