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 …
