Social Networks for Social Justice

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Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on October 27, 2009 at 3:57pm

I talk a lot about digital citizenship with my computer students. We discuss digital etiquette, proper forms of communication, appropriate online behavior, etc. One of my goals is to show students how technology can be used for good and to counter a lot of the negative news we see in the media about teens and the Internet.

My 8th grade students have created a blog about environmental stewardship at http://ccassinelli.edublogs.org. For 40 days, students will post an idea on how we can affect climate change and encourage readers to try them. We started on the International Day of Climate Change 10/24/09 and will post until December 2nd. We’ve invited other classes to comment on our blogs and we will reciprocate and respond.

Students are divided into teams of four. Each student has an editorial job to assist their teammates with their blog posts: technical, production, communications and creative editors.

Students are practicing their digital citizenship skills and protecting their privacy by using first names only, not identifying our school or where they live, supporting their writing with facts, and citing their sources. I moderate all comments that are received before they are posted. We’ve just begun and the students are already excited about the comments they are receiving.

We would like to invite the community to participate in our 40day blog project at http://ccassinelli.edublogs.org

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Schwartz on October 28, 2009 at 10:46am

Taking it Global - great site.

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Permalink Reply by Marie G. on October 29, 2009 at 3:55pm

I follow John Spencer's Blog. This is a link to the blog that his middle schoolers use called Social Voice. It sounds like just what you are looking for!

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Permalink Reply by Will Richardson on November 1, 2009 at 4:56am

Thanks everyone for the replies. Wishing there were more. ;0)

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Permalink Reply by Johnathan Chase on November 1, 2009 at 5:56am

Two years ago students in my college-level Public Affairs class set up a community service club called the Do Good Society in our school and created a MySpace page to share their work and promote doing good.

The 2007 group of students was more active in maintaining and updating the page ( more young people seem to be migrating to Facebook ) and subsequent classes have been less involved/interested. This is an extra credit activity and not a course requirement and since our school filter blocks MySpace student volunteers must maintain the page at home and our rural school district does not support high speed internet in all areas.

Think it does have great potential and could serve as a model social network activity for other groups to expand upon, I do log in from time to time just to check for comments from former students and one of my class of 2007 students actually changed the profile appearance and song this past summer...

Do Good Society MySpace

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