But there is a strong argument for incorporating online social networking into the educational and library setting. It just depends on how you do it. The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County reaches out to teens in a unique way through a library island in Teen Second Life and offers them programming and information. Another possibility is to create content with students, like this TeacherTube media center animato video, that they may choose to put on their social networking page.
Some people feel it's important to go beyond the pre-established social networking environments and create your own school social network. Steve Hargadon, creator of Classroom 2.0 (a Ning social networking site), believes there is a way to set up private networking sites for schools. In this smaller, more specialized, school-controlled network, students can actively contribute to content creation in meaningful ways.
I was curious about how easily a Ning social networking site could be created. So I set one up. My goal was to create one for my extended family to do some online networking and sharing-similar to what could be set up for a media center's online school learning and sharing community. I found it to be easy and like the ability to blog, share videos and photos, and have a threaded discussion board. Because it has a private setting, only 'My Friends' can access it and comment on it. Here's a picture of the main page:
For a detailed look at how a school could create it's own safe and engaging social network read this FunnyMonkey's article. It speaks to creating an online learning environment for schools that has different levels of private and public access by using a combination of free software. The suggestion enables clubs, classes, departments, and school groups to have a private place for networking and sharing and a public place, a website, for what they want the public to access.
So, social networking in schools and in the media center can go beyond 'friending' to create a learning environment that students can access at any time. It's a place they can share their work, comment on each others' work, plan for upcoming club meetings, create and add to a learning portfolio, just to name a few uses. And it's not just up to one person, such as the media specialist to add content. It is a school community project of connecting.
1 comment:
Social Networking sites pose a new set of problems for educators, and most of us don’t want any more issues. However, a large number of our students are using social networking sites to connect to the world. They are communicating and writing to each other at an alarming rate. We need to tap this resource. Your method is right on. Schools, though worried about the issues that may arise, can exhibit more control over this type of internet use than most people are aware of. There are people in every school willing to spearhead their own efforts and try things out. You have shown that it is not very difficult to set up a simple yet effective environment to network and communicate. This environment can be controlled and monitored. We cannot monitor everything the students do outside of our environment, but they are doing many of these things right now anyway. It is true new discipline codes and procedures will need to address online behavior, but if we are going to be current, we need to address those topics anyway. The truth is that educators are making themselves seem backwards or out of touch by ignoring the technology and resources that are currently available (most of which are free). We need to jump on this ride because our students are currently learning through social networks in spite of us rather than with us.
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