Using social networking sites in education

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jack Phelps on January 14, 2008 at 9:18am

Hi Matthew~

I run a site called ChitChat (it's only about a month old at present) where we're trying to make it easier for teachers to use social networking in education. We've started by building a teacher network where your page (akin to a myspace page) doubles as a class website & destination for your students, where you can post interactive assignments and study tools that allow you to very easily see & collect the work your students have done and provide them feedback on it, all 100% secure so you don't have to worry about most of the issues that usually accompany social networks. We also connect you with other teachers so you can easily share content, enable comments on your posts, etc. We're going to expand over time into allowing students to network more within their classes and schools, as well.

Hopefully these ideas are interesting to you, and you don't mind the commercial nature of this message too much.

-Jack

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on January 14, 2008 at 11:47am

Hey!

Buzz over and look at http://education.ning.com to find other educators using Ning networks in education who can give a lot of advice on this topic. You might also want to look at http://socialnetworksined.wikispaces.com.

Cheers!

Steve

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Permalink Reply by Matthew H on January 15, 2008 at 2:00am

Thanks for the Replys,
I dont know if im getting this right, we use a Virtual Learning Environment, Fronter, though moving to moodle, which involves all this interactivity, such as messeging boards, interactive assignments ect. Could this be classed as social networking?

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on January 24, 2008 at 9:38am

I certainly would. While a "social network" does carry a connotation right now of a certain kind of grouping of functionality in one place (profile page, discussion forum, messaging, etc.) there's a lot of overlap and gray area. For example, online bulletin boards from years ago could easily be seen as a form of social networking.

On the other hand, the word "social" does seem to connote aspects that are not strictly information exchange. And especially services like Ning help to build "community."

I sense in the larger ed tech community a desire to find a phrase for the kind of educational networking that encompasses social networks, Moodle, bulletin boards, etc. Victoria Davis has suggested "educational networking." I kind of like "online collaborative communities"...

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Permalink Reply by Jack Phelps on January 24, 2008 at 9:51am

ChitChat uses "educational networking" too (and we're not trying to trademark it or anything). I think it's an appropriate term that can help differentiate between services that are completely social and others that have an expressly educational purpose and/or toolset. It's pretty arbitrary in most cases, but I think it's worthwhile to have something in hand for the host of school IT personnel who like to ban anything social.

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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Buhner on January 24, 2008 at 10:12am

Were you sitting in on the conversation I was just having about this very thing!!!??? What constitutes "social"? How/who will we monitor what the teachers are doing to ensure quality? What consitutes "best practice" and how do we promote/monitor that in this type of situation? These are the questions we have to be able to answer. I am investigating ChitChat right now.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Phelps on January 24, 2008 at 10:31am

Thanks Suzanne :) Always glad to hear about people having these really important conversations. I hate to get too commercial in Steve's forums, but if you want to shoot me an e-mail at jack@chitch.at I'd love to chat with you a bit more about what you guys are looking for and how we might be able to help (for example, ChitChat automatically connects teachers who sign up with the same school or district URL so they can collaborate on and share content). We're just under 2 months old and adding functionality pretty rapidly, so the more feedback and requests we get, the more useful our technology becomes!

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Permalink Reply by Suzanne Buhner on January 24, 2008 at 6:54am

We are looking into applications for helping teachers in our very large district network with each other. We have designed a ning just for them, but are also looking into an application that ties together any sharepoint sites they have created along with SchoolNet which is rolling out this year...so I will check in often to see what you all are working with. I will also let you know how our ning worked out.

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Permalink Reply by Mary Hricko on January 24, 2008 at 8:20am

Hi Matthew,

I am currently working on a paper/reserch project invovling the use of social networking sites in education and I found several articles in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication that examine the development of social networking in education apps. The journal is online so you can easily access the articles. I think the link is http://jcmc.indianan.edu

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on January 24, 2008 at 9:44am

Slight typo on the URL just above from Mary. Should be: http://jcmc.indiana.edu. :)

Thanks, Mary. Looks fascinating.

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Permalink Reply by Damolward on January 24, 2008 at 1:05pm

Hi, a global perspective for you from the UK.
Facebook, My Space and BeBo are almost universally used in high schools here in England; separated only by age group (younger ones on BeBo then Facebook and staff on My Space). The use of these sites has replaced the "craze" for MSN IM and the like only 2 years ago. Students reluctant to use technology quite happliy log in and use a Bebo page every day (and seemingly every night too). I too would like to harness this enthusiasm before the "next big thing" comes along. keep us informed!
D Ward

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Permalink Reply by Matthew H on January 25, 2008 at 2:07am

Hi Damolward, im in the uk.
This is more what im on about, how do we harness facebook and youtube into our college environment? and how do we do it safely? theres lots of potential there but thers also a lot of nasty stuff there to.
We have a VLE which provides the students with there work and means of colaboration, but they seam reluctant to use it.

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