Archive for category Internet Education
Social Networking vs. social networking
Posted by lou in Internet Education on May 19th, 2008
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 …
Economic Development – Aligning Education with Regional Economic Needs
Posted by lou in Internet Education, US Education on September 16th, 2007
I was fortunate enough to be invited to a LEED event on Friday, September 7th. LEED is an association (Linking Education and Economic Development) dedicated to encouraging alignment between the needs of industry and education in the greater Sacramento area. The format was breakfast with a keynote speaker, a panel of speakers, and a series of other speakers. The general tone of the meeting was about the strides the local higher ed community has made to produce workers capable of making the region’s economy grow.
Sacramento has, like much of California, three tiers of higher ed – community colleges, a CSU campus (CSU Sacramento) and a UC campus (UC Davis). This is aligned to the overall California Master Education Plan where the community colleges offer open enrollment to anyone who can pay a minimal per unit fee; the CSU system focuses on undergraduate and masters degrees; and, the UC system focuses on research and Phd programs. In Sacramento, over 80,000 students attend the Los Rios Community College district’s programs. This was seen as a net win under the master plan. CSU Sacramento, reported that they have been so successful that they have been allowed to offer a Phd in Education, a relative rarity under the master plan. And, rightly so, the officials from UC Davis bragged about their leadership positions in wine making, bio-engineering, medical research, and their new focus on clean and green energy technology.
It was easy to see how the case can be made that their efforts have been beneficial to the region’s economy. It is clear that companies in the area are appreciative of the efforts of the education institutions. So, was there anything to be concerned about?
Well, I found it a little interesting that the pace of technological advancement would be so strong and so little would be mentioned about the application of technology to the educational process. I sat next to a lady who had the position of being on the governor’s staff to oversee how the educational institutions were using the public’s funds. When I asked her if there was a desire to use technology, particularly in the first two years of college to distribute so called “general ed” classes over the Internet, she said that she felt there was a negative reaction to such a thought by the higher ed institutions. When I pointed out that there were many private companies, Kaplan and the University of Phoenix for example, that were doing this today, she fell back on the old saw about those degrees not being fully accredited.
Her information is out of date, but I did not press her on this point. My colleague was especially chagrined that there is so little being done to challenge the status quo in this respect.
In Issue 14 of the iJournal, Dr. Omid Pourzanjani wrote the article,
Higher Education in the 21st Century:
The Impact of Online Instruction and Services
In the article, he makes a compelling case that the day is coming when general ed classes will be open to anyone on the Internet and it won’t matter to you degree which on-line provider serves up the content. He speaks about the implications of this for the current institutions of higher learning and how they will have to adapt or perish.
For me, the goals of the LEED group must go beyond that of just linking industry and education together. There must be some current of improvement in education that is carried forward within the organization.
Of course, this is just my opinion…
Thoughts on getting information off the NET
Posted by lou in Internet Education on August 27th, 2007
The Sacramento Bee runs a series of articles on Fridays for and by teens called sidetracks (www.myspace.com/sacbeesidetracks). In April, three teens commented on plagiarism and how much easier and more prevalent it has become with the Internet. The focus was on writing assignments where something was due and the student either copied information verbatim from someplace or did not quote or provide a reference that the writing (ideas) were influenced by an external source. I have a couple of reactions to the things said in the article.
Open Content Education?
Posted by lou in Internet Education on July 15th, 2007
I want to consider the effect of wikipedia on education. Many kids consider wikipedia to be a (or the) definitive source of information for projects. It is interesting that at the Web 2.0 conference they spoke of how wikipedia is now the number one “educational” web site, having surpassed the other on-line encyclopedia sites. Can wikipedia be considered a proper source for information to be used in school? I have heard that many teachers will not allow wikipedia to be used as a source? What other sources are allowed to be cited in a report?