Social Skills 2.0
What Are Our Actions Saying?
Click for an audio recording of this blog. What Are Our Actions Saying
I just stumbled across a very interesting new blog. It’s called Students 2.0. Please take a moment to read this. http://students2oh.org/ . This blog is sponsored by an educator and is open to any student. The students do not post directly to the blog but rather type their post and email it to the blog owner.
There is an interesting post entitled, One Sweet Dream, which is about how a student felt about education in middle school as opposed to their thoughts now. This student is begging for education to provide students with a means to have a voice. Here is a quote from the student’s post, “The further into my high school career I go, the more my face, name, and personality gets traded out for a couple of numbers. It seems as though modern high school is becoming less about personal growth through learning, and more about preparing your resume for Dream College.”
At the bottom of the page is a link to older posts. Here is a quote from a post entitled, The Difference between Teaching and Preaching, “Preaching is what most teachers do today. We sit in classrooms for a certain amount of time listening to the “Teacher’s Bible of Study,” devouring information. Projects are limited to be viewed only by the class, and occasionally meet the hallway display.”
We have to keep our students safe and that is a very noble cause. However, in our determination to protect our students, do we have them wrapped so tightly in cotton wool, that we are suffocating them?
Social Networking
Click for an audio recording of the following blog, Social Networking
Work is different.
Tools are different.
Communication is different.
Information is different.
Kids are different.
Learning is different.
Teaching is different.
And leading must be different!
Wednesday’s Spotlight Speaker at the VDOE Educational Technology Conference in Roanoke, Virginia (12/5/2007), was Dr. Ann Flynn , president of the National School Board Association. Her topic that morning was on social networking in the schools.
Dr. Flynn shared with us a report from the NSBA called Creating and Connecting. This was a very interesting research document!
Social networking sites are growing by leaps and bounds! In April 2007, Technorati had 12,000 blogs. Facebook now stands at about 32 million pages. MySpace gets about 150 new members daily, in fact, about 12% of all internet minutes spent are on MySpace. In another workshop I attended, a video clip was shown containing a lot of statistics and I learned that if MySpace were a country, it would be the 8th largest in the world! This is amazing!
There is some generational confusion concerning social networking. Most SN users are under 35 (wish that were true in my case). Most school board members and teachers are over 35. I have heard many statements about children not talking to “real” people; they are just always online. Hey folks! They are talking to real people.
The other argument most teachers and adminstration have concerns all the online predators out there. The study, however, suggested that internet dangers are decreasing. Dr. Flynn is attributing this to the incerased education in the area of Internet Safety. While there is never going to be a way found to eliminate all the dangers of social networking, we could be so fearful that we turn our backs on tools that could educate students. This would be a tragedy since 43% of the nation is not graduating from school. One high school student was quoted as saying, “I have to power down when I go to school.”
“But we have to teach our SOLs! We do not have time to integrate technology” Unfortuantely, the accountability bandwagon is dangeroulsy proceeding down a rocky road with four broken axles. With standardized testing as our only measure of success in school, the question remains, are we preparing our students for our past or their future? I read some place that one of the major reasons for NCLB was due to business concerns that students were graduating without having core knowledge. The big businesses of our time are HP, IBM, SUN, Intel, Cisco, Apple and Microsoft. Twenty percent of the employees in these businesses have never met their bosses. Two-thirds of the employees in these companies work on 3 or more teams acrosss 2 or more continents. When will we be held accountable for not preparing our students to meet the expectations of companies such as these? The state of Virginia use to test technology SOLs but stopped a long time ago. Technology Standards of Learning are still in place but are seldom seen as having the same importance as other areas. Digital and media literacy are very much needed!
In 2002 17% of 9-17 year olds had their own blog. That number increases daily. Kids are going to use the new technologies. We need to teach them to be used responsibly.
Using blogs, wikis, and other social networking sites in the classroom would be of real benefit as long as it was driven by instruction. Teachers need to advocate for the right to reach their students. We need to dialogue with each other, with our administration and with the social networking companies. We need to look for the educational value in social networking and we need to encourage social networking organizations to increase the educational value of their products.
Over and over again at this conference top notch educators, who were demonstrating and being praised for awesome educational projects, were asked how they managed to get their administration to approve the project. The answer every time was, “It’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.” Instructional best practices are changing.
For further information on the NSBA’s research report please check here: http://www.pbs.org/teachers/learning.now/2007/08/new_nsba_report_on_social_netw.html
Also, please check out these social networking links:
Teach Jeff Spanish: http://www.teachjeffspanish.com/
Feel the History: http://www.feelthehistory.com/
Gaggle.net http://gaggle.net/
Think.com http://www.think.com/en/
EPals http://www.epals.com/
School Tube http://www.schooltube.com/
Teacher Tube http://www.teachertube.com/
Study Curve http://www.studycurve.com/
Meet Me At The Corner http://www.meetmeatthecorner.org/
Whyville http://www.whyville.net/smmk/nice
Club Penguin http://www.clubpenguin.com/
