Instructify

By now, you’ve no doubt heard the tragic story of a Missouri teen who committed suicide after interacting with a fake Facebook user. The incident has sparked another round of intense discussion in schools about the power, value, and danger of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. The knee-jerk reaction in many schools has been to block access to these sites and encourage teachers to stay away. Is this the right approach?

Last week, I outlined some of the basics of using Facebook as an educator. This week, I take a look at mixing schools and social networks.

With or Without You, They’re Using It

My 14-year-old brother used to continually play a cat-and-mouse game with our parents over social networking. They would tell him he’s not allowed to maintain a profile, but as soon as he spent the night with a friend, he created one. He would use that until he was caught, then penitently make a public show of deleting it; within a few days, he was back online with a new profile.

These days, he maintains a steady online presence on Facebook, where he’s added over 200 friends from different area high schools, and a handful of other friends. My wife and I are two of his online friends, so I check in on his profile every so often. I won’t say that I’m comfortable with everything I see on there, but on the most recent visit, I got quite a surprise: of the ten posts on his wall, seven were about school work. He’s talking with friends about script writing, science papers, and projects. For years I have been trying to get my brother to talk about what he’s learning in school, and I’ve never had any luck whatsoever. As it turns out, he talks about his schoolwork all the time… just not with me!

Listen to your kids talk in the classroom, and it’s not hard to tell- they are leading rich and interesting online lives. Some are bragging about the results of last night’s game of Team Fortress, some are chatting about the new sneakers they found at Hypebeast, some are talking about the party they were invited to on MySpace.

A head-in-the-sand approach to social networking sites ignores the fact that students will use it with or without the school’s blessing. And they’re getting value out of those networks- the New York Times reported in March that social networks are transforming students’ transitions from high school to college and students are using Facebook all over the world to form grassroots activist efforts.

Every educator is being forced to make decisions right now about how to deal with a plurality of new tools, and in so doing, make choices about how they interact with the world students encounter outside school. There’s a lot of buzz in some states about producing “21st Century Citizens;” but a topic that gets talked about less is how 21st century students will react when they go head-to-head with educators who remain firmly entrenched in 20th century paradigms of teaching, learning, and communication.

The Utility of Social Networks

Sure, adding friends to your profile has limited educational use. But before a school shuts the door on social networking applications, isn’t it worth considering the instructional uses of that application?

Danah Boyd, a PhD candidate at the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, has devoted a great deal of time and energy towards studying social networks and how teens are using them in her blog, apophenia. (If you don’t want to wade through her personal posts, she’s collected her most popular essays and presentations on a best-of page.)

Boyd has found that the online networks kids build tend to mirror their physical networks- the majority of kids’ online friends are people that they see in person. This gives teachers an opportunity to enter their online networks without threatening them. In an interview, Boyd notes:

Teaching bigger issues around privacy is good. Across the board there needs to be a media literacy component. Media literacy touches on many levels; it’s not just about how to use the latest and greatest technology, but also exploring what information you’re getting from ads. What does it mean to live in a hypermediated society? And how do we learn to become a literate participant of it, even a critical literate participant of it? So on a bigger scale, there are questions around when and where to introduce new modules into the curriculum. But then there are always the little interventions that can happen now.

One intervention worth considering now is defining what social networks are and what they’re for. If MySpace, which allows users to post content and comment on it, qualifies as a social network, wouldn’t Wikipedia qualify as well? What about blogs?

Predators and Prey

In January, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)(yes, he’s the “Internet is a series of tubes” guy) introduced Senate Bill 49, which could have banned from schools sites that “enable communication among users.” Particularly targeted were sites where users can create profiles that include any level of personal information, which Wikipedia allows. For all Wikipedia’s faults, it’s a tremendous resource and often serves as the starting point for research done by students and teachers. Shutting it off because it allows communication between users seems reactionary, especially when you consider that the most disputed entries on Wikipedia are often refined in the “discussion” pages.

Parents most often cite safety concerns when condemning social networks, and the media loves to play upon our fears of a vicious, lurking cyber-predator when reporting on social networks. However, research suggests that our kids may be safer than the media has led us to believe – much safer. Pete Reilly, President of the New York Association of Computers and Technology in Education (NYSCATE), has pulled together various and contrasting statistics to help teachers evaluate the risks:

The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”

We don’t take a “zero risk” approach with our sports programs where the chance of injury, paralysis, and, in rare cases, death, is always present. We don’t take that approach with field trips where students travel to museums and historical sites in locations where they might be touched by crime. We don’t take that approach with recess on our playgrounds, or transporting our kids to and from school.

While social networks and emerging technologies have played a role in some very public tragedies, they have also been used to prevent tragedies, as well. MSNBC reported in September that colleges were using text messaging and Facebook to warn students of potentially dangerous situations.

Can We Create Our Own?

Social networks are pretty neutral until the users come along and give them some meaning. Imagine the vastness of an empty MySpace, where only Tom showed up. We wouldn’t be nearly as concerned about it, but we also wouldn’t care; it wouldn’t be any different from the tens-of-thousands of user-created sites that don’t allow for two-way communication.

So schools are now struggling to find ways to safely incorporate social networking, often using homegrown tools, software they’ve purchased and installed locally, or private networks offered by commercial services like Ning. Sadly, the cost of security is scalability; the most successful ventures into school-based social networking aren’t open to those who would seek to replicate them. So, while we have a small (but growing) body of research on the topic, the majority of the discussion around using social networks in schools seems to center around student misbehavior and teacher privacy issues (http://www.edutopia.org/poll-teachers-punished-social-networking).

The National School Boards Association released a report in August detailing their findings about what students were doing online, and includes the following guidelines for school administrators, some of which may defy the logic you’ve heard from your school, your system, even Congress:

1. Explore social networking sites.
2. Consider using social networking for staff communications and professional development.
3. Ensure equitable access.
4. Encourage social networking companies to increase educational value.

How did NSBA come to those conclusions? The research study polled students and parents, and the findings clearly showed that parents who see students using social networking tools at home recognize the need for schools to acknowledge them. According to the study, parents have “strong expectations about the positive roles that social networking could play in students’ lives.” Educators, it seems, need to start thinking about how to make those positive roles a reality. -ROSS WHITE

How is your school or system using social networking? Let us know in the comments section.