Week 4 - The Social Web/ Social Networking

Social Networking! Hooray! A subject I am finally well versed in!  I have been an online social butterfly, since I was, goodness maybe around 11 years old.  Wow, that fact is almost frightening, this means that nearly half of my life I've been wired to the World Wide Web.  My brain is probably mush by now.   Let's see, I began using AIM with my friends at school right about the time that instant messaging became possible.   When Facebook first began, you were only able to attain an account with a college email address, so I was a Myspace user.  The summer before my Junior year of high school FB opened its doors to any email account.  I've been hooked since.  I am sure I check FB at the very least once a day.  (And I don't even have internet access at home!)


I personally refused to be a Twitter tweeter.  However, it is only because I couldn't really fathom anyone's desire to follow me.  Twitter I believe is a very useful site for famous people like, Hollywood star-lights, popular musicians, authors, and highly published educated types.  Unless if someone finally talks me into trying for American Idol, X factor,  or some other crazy TV show jump to stardom, I seriously doubt anyone's need to know just what I'm up to or my thoughts on the matter.  My friends and family barely want and update on whats going on in all of my goings on, and that is perniciously why we're friends on FB and I sometimes state "whats on my mind".

Reading the article on being a Twitter teacher I really do see the educational benefits and uses to giving Twitter another chance, in a different light.   I love the idea of using Twitter as a form of alternative assessment during lessons to not interrupt class/ lesson flow, but still be able to keep track of where student's understanding.  Having a live stream for discussion, collaborative writings, helpful hints, clarifications, and video/photo connections seems like an endless resource to help enhance classroom learning.   The usefulness of social networks for administrative connections as well as community inclusion and information providing seems so practical as well. 




I had never really understood what Ning was before reading the Chapters in Richardson's text. to be honest, Ning was just another website, among the list, that my high school informed us that we weren't allowed to access while on the campus grounds.  I'm very disappointing in my high school, because Ning seems perfectly harmless and extremely practical for student/teacher use in appropriate school approved ways. It seems like another great location for a more private classroom network for students to collaborate and or have discussions on educational topics.

The debate over the practicality and safe use of social networking sites in classrooms is a hot one.  I have to agree with the choice most districts have made to ban most sites.  To be honest, teachers are just starting to catch up with their student's uses of sites for "friendship based" connections.   It may prove to difficult to monitor student's use, educate them, and guide them to tasteful choices, while the educator is still 2 steps behind on the uses themselves.  Teachers should not be friends with their students.  I mean, I call all of my student's "friends" as a collective whole, and relations should be friendly, and I believe they should transcend the school environment to the outside world.  However, students need teachers to be educators, authority figures, and most importantly role models not buddies, and especially not buddies online.  Showing students appropriate ways to use social networks is necessary, and I think that is were using private twitter classroom following, or Ning groups would come in.