Three hundred miles.  That is the distance that separates two school districts I recently had the opportunity to visit.  Yes, one is in a blue state and the other in a red state, but they are close enough to each other than I could drive to visit them both.  They are also in what we call the Midwest.  But, they have such contrasting differences of opinions with respect to technology and the role it plays in education that I was really surprised.

The first technology director I visited, I’ll call him Mr. X, was very much an open communication supporter.  Me: Do you provide email accounts to all your students?  Mr. X: “Yes, and we are probably going to give them all gmail and google doc access next year”.  Me: Do you block access to Instant Messaging? Mr. X: “No.  We don’t block anything.  But, we monitor the usage of our workstations in terms of time and the network bandwidth utilized.  We have the ability to traffic shape to lessen the impact of certain sites like YouTube, etc.”.  Me: Are you at all worried about liability for what kids write or publish? Mr X.: “Not really.  Kids are going to do bad things at times.  We have to deal with it if it happens in a classroom, on a playground, or on an Internet bulletin board”.

The second technology director I visited, I’ll call him Mr. Y, was an old school (pardon the pun) kind of guy.  But, he had all the latest and greatest technology available for use in his schools.  Me: Do you provide email accounts to all your students?  Mr. Y: “No, we currently do not.  We are concerned about the liability for the district”.   Me: Do you block access to Instant Messaging? Mr. Y: “Yes, we block most all sites like that.”

What is curious to me is that the facts of the matter are exactly the same for both districts.  There are no laws in one state that are more or less of an issue than in the other state.  Access to the technology is exactly the same.  So, this must not be a logical difference of opinion, right?  Many people I know would say something to the effect that “This is a political issue.  It does not have to make sense.”  That is probably true.  I wonder what cultural elements are at work that push two seemingly similar districts to take dramatically different views of an issue like this.  Politicians, in general, seem to embrace the use of the Internet in schools so it couldn’t be them, could it?  I browsed the web sites of  a couple of so called red states departments of education.

In South Dakota (not one of the states Mr. X & Y live in), Governor Mike Rounds has published his 2010 State Education Initiative (here).  In his plan, The Governor includes among its goals:

Objective 2C: Increase 21st century skills using advanced technology to enhance learning.

Initiatives:

1. Create a statewide virtual high school program
2. Implement a one-to-one laptop initiative for high school students
3. Implement an e-mentoring program

Both a statewide virtual high school program and a one to one laptop initiative will require each and every school in the state to embrace the use of the Internet, and, I might add, social networking (see the article on Social Networking vs. social networking).

In Iowa, Governor Chet Culver issued a press release on March 25th, 2008 that stated among other things:

“(Des Moines, Iowa)-  Today, Iowa Governor Culver announced a joint initiative with the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the nation’s leading advocacy organization focused on infusing
21st century skills into education, to bring globally competitive 21st centurskills to schools, educators and students throughout Iowa.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (here) publishes this as its mission:

MISSION STATEMENT
Serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders

TWENTY FIRST CENTURY CHILDREN
Every child in American needs 21st century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century.

There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces.

To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills.

This skills set includes:

• Information and communication skills (information and media literacy skills; communication skills)
• Thinking and problem-solving (critical thinking and systems thinking; problem identification, formulation and solution; creativity and intellectual curiosity)
• Interpersonal and self-direction skills (interpersonal and collaborative skills; self-direction; accountability and adaptability; social responsibility)
• Global awareness
• Financial, economic and business literacy, and developing entrepreneurial skills to enhance workplace productivity and career options
• Civic literacy

Go to any state department of education website and the themes are pretty much all the same.  My conclusion is that the politicians are in favor of greater access to technology, even in blue states where supporting President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” would be seen as a negative.  At the national and state levels then, the message is pretty clear.  What can explain the difference in these situations?

I then looked at the make up of the school boards at the two school districts, thinking that maybe the policies were locally based.  I looked at age of the members, occupations, gender, and race, which was all I could glean from the web sites.  In both cases, there was not an appreciable difference in the makeup of the school boards, at least nothing that could explain it.  Then, I looked at the Superintendents of the districts.  Mr. X’s superintendent is a young man in his 30’s while Mr. Y’s is an older gentleman in his 60s.  This is the only appreciable difference I can find in the two districts.

The conclusion I came to is that this is really a situation which will resolve itself as the “old guard” of education retires or leaves the profession.  The new wave of people coming up are much more likely to see these technologies as being important or at the very minimum “just what needs to be done”.

More later…

What?  Is there a difference?  I believe there to be.

Social Networking, big S, big N, represents what goes on on MySpace, Facebook, and perhaps LinkedIn.  That is, those sites are about “Me”. They represent a place to share my interests, my thoughts, and who I want people to think I am.  My purpose may be to stay in touch with my friends, connect to old friends, or to find new friends.  But those services provide me a site on the Internet about ME.  Now, LinkedIn has a slightly different purpose in that it is about my career, but basically it is still about me.

Contrast that with social networking (little s, little n) which I claim is a collection of features that are used in Social Networking, but have applicability outside of it.  These features are used to identify and leverage connections between individuals or groups of individuals.  These connections can then be used for multiple purposes.  Social search and social bookmarking are a couple of examples of these features.

The reason I was motivated to write this blog entry is that I have been reading some opinions posted on the net about the concern that parents and schools have about the use of Social Networking in school.  The articles claim that most school districts block MySpace and Facebook, and do not allow Instant Messaging from school computers.  There have been quotes where school officials have said that there needs to be some data that shows that these sites have an educational purpose.

I have quite a few issues with the opinions summarized above.  Let me start with the last opinion – Social Networking sites must have an educational purpose.  There have been many things written about how K-12 education is behind the times and is not preparing our youth for the realities of our world.  The presentation “Did You Know” produced by the people behind the group “Shift Happens” makes a compelling point about the challenges of today (not tomorrow).  The presentation can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Social Networking sites are the way that many people will interact in the future with friends and colleagues they perhaps have not or will not ever meet face to face.  Collaboration is a proven educational method for improving retention of concepts taught in a learning environment.  These sites, while filled with many distractions, are methods for collaboration.  So, the ability to use Social Networking sites would be considered at least a valid part of a learning curriculum if not as a baseline set of tools to enable collaborative learning.  However, I can see where parents and school officials would be hard pressed to get behind the use of MySpace or Facebook as a learning tool.  They were not designed to be educational tools or really collaborative in nature.  Thus, my point about social networking in lower case.  It is the features that are collaborative and have real educational purpose.

Another logical reason for the lack of parent and school official support is that I wager very few are actual users of either MySpace or Facebook.  While MySpace has been adopted by the music and entertainment industry as a way of doing PR, and Facebook seems to have a growing use among professionals as a way to connect and further one’s career, by and large there is nothing to attrack the use of either as a parent or school official.  In fact, all their experiences with either have been negative for the most part.  Stories of child predetors using these sites as a way to find victims scares parents and leads them to ban the use of these sites for their kids.

I predict that this will change, and perhaps in as little as 2-3 years.  Stories in the news about how mothers are adopting text messaging to communicate with their children who are in college or high school are everywhere.  I would wager that anyone reading this blog has observed the same thing.  We are all learning what lol, gtg, l8r, and other txt words mean.  The reason for this phenomenon is the same reason social networking will take off.  Kids do not use email.  They text or they leave messages on the Social Network sites’ message boards. Parents will create their own accounts and begin to do the same.  It helps that these methods are frequently more efficient than email or phone calls.

Blocking MySpace, Facebook, and Instant Messaging:

It has been a commonplace practice for school districts to limit or control their liability by limiting access to the Internet, to email, and to the new generation of web based tools.  The risk of legal action against a school district is ALWAYS present.  In our current society a school district can be perceived to be liable for almost anything that negatively impacts any student while that student is on school grounds, or in the case of the Internet, using school property.  My personal beliefs are that society in general makes much too much about things that used to be just “kids being kids” when I was growing up.  But, everyone is entitled to their own opinion where their own kids are concerned.

Have there been instances where the school district has been seen to be legally liable for damages when a student has used their access to the Internet? Or,  to threaten someone or to publish something that was hateful? Well, they certainly have been sued – and for a variety of things related to Internet use.

Examples:

1) District sued over eMail policy banning religious messages: (here)

2) School sued over response to MySpace photo (here)

3) Parents sue school district for Wi-Fi use (here)

4) Appeals Court Weighs Teen’s Web Speech (here)

There are many more examples of schools being sued over issues where they are “damned if they do, damned if they don’t”.  So, while I may bemoan the fact that my school is not providing things I want for my children, it is just as likely that there is someone whose child attends the same school that is thankful that they are not.

What does this all mean and where is this all going?  More to come …