http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzpix/3332094759/
I was reading Will Richardson’s article on the use of social networking sites in classrooms. Will was quoting the research of Christine Greenhowa doctoral student at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Yes, some of you might say that I am showing a little self interest in choosing this article as I have completed some summer institute courses there myself, however the research strongly supports a view I hold that we need to embed the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms, if we want to engage our youth in schooling.
While Greenhow cautions that the study wasn’t intended to be nationally representative, it is only slightly higher than national studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that 82 percent of teens with a family median income of $30,000 or less were online, and that among all teens, 58 percent had a profile on a SNS.
The teens and include my own teenagers are on the social networking sites on a daily basis both here in Australia and other countries around the world.
As national magazines and newspapers debate what it means to be literate in a computer age in which students butcher language in text messages and open books less and less outside the classroom, Greenhow has found a virtual creative writing boom among students spending long hours writing stories and poetry to paste on their blogs for feedback from friends, or creating videos on social issues to bring awareness to a cause. Far from media stories about cyber bullying, meanwhile, she found that most students use the medium to reach out to their peers for emotional support and as a way to develop self-esteem. One student created a video of his intramural soccer team to entice his friends to come to his games. Another created an online radio show to express his opinions, then used Facebook to promote a URL where friends could stream it live, and then used one of Facebook’s add-in applications to create a fan site for the show.
I have been busy advocating the use of student blogs for years but it requires teachers to be a little tech savvy with email addresses for students logging on and looking at access issues in classrooms. We are thinking that a classroom wiki for students might just be a stepping stone into writing and using blogs for feedback.
Despite the potential of social networking sites in developing marketable skills, however, Greenhow has been frustrated by the lack of attention paid to them — or to the Internet in general — in the classroom. For her doctoral thesis, “From Blackboard to Browser,” Greenhow looked at how teachers’ expectations and assumptions about teaching affected the way they used (or didn’t use) the Internet in the classroom. “She did a very systematic and well-reasoned study about quite a practical matter,” says Lecturer Stone Wiske, Ed.D.’83, Greenhow’s thesis advisor who has studied the use of technology in schools. Greenhow found that the teachers who were most effective in integrating the Internet into the classroom were those who subscribed to constructivism — the theory that effective teaching allows students to construct new ideas from the expertise they already have.
This is still a fundamental shift in thinking for lots of teachers – yes we teach students with explicit instruction at the point of need – but the thinking in classrooms must be constructed by students not done to students – for learning is about constructing understandings [and skills] that we can apply in our lives.
What was more surprising to her, however, is how few teachers were using the Internet at all — and even fewer were aware of, much less using, social networking sites, despite their heavy usage by students. “It is the kids who are leading the way on this,” she says. “They are forming networks with people they meet every day as well as people they have barely met. If we can’t understand what kids are doing and integrate these tools into a classroom, what kind of message are we sending them? I think we’ll see an even bigger disconnect than already exists.”
I think one of the easy blockers is the computers don’t work or are too old [I have increased technical support services this year] but for large parts of the day the computers are not even switched on [this points to internal access issues]. I think another frustration has been filters blocking all the social networking sites for fear of ……….. but nothing replaces trust – agreements and consequences and constant supervision or monitoring.
The journey continues….
