Do want to share your story about using social networking in the classroom?

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on February 16, 2011 at 7:28am

How about social learning tools? Social media tools were designed for use with students, not for the mass market.
Facebook and Twitter are mass market tools. Everyone has heard of them. They have their uses. But they are very poorly designed to do many things that schools need, and they don't really care about educational uses.

How about tools that are designed for safe use with K12 students, that don't have privacy issues? You could talk about sites that observe FERPA (more important in universities) and COPPA and CIPA (critically important to follow in K12 education if an institution wants federal funding).

Some sites have TRUSTe certification, an independent assessment of their ability to provide privacy of student information.
See www.truste.com for some of the education-focused companies who are investing in social media strategies. Some of the companies who have earned TRUSTe certification are:
Cahootie
Brightstorm
Course Hero
Disney Internet
Education Planet
ePals
GoTrybe
Kidzrocket
Leafcutter
Leapfrog
Schoolwires
Thinkquest
Togetherville
Vantage Learning

"Using social media in the classroom" is a whole lot more than using Facebook and Twitter. Those mass market sites create problems. Companies dedicated to serving education are creating powerful social media tools. Now THAT would be a really interesting session!

Two very interesting and large-scale examples of using social media in the K12 classroom are:
1. International Baccalaureate virtual community (IBvc). They are NOT using Facebook. They licensed ePals LearningSpace as a web 2.0 social media platform. They have rolled it out this school year with MYP and DP schools (middle and high schools) and with all their teachers in 140 countries. They have groups for various classes (IB Theory of Knowledge, IB Art History, etc.). Now THAT is a really interesting example of social media used for learning. See a 3-minute video about it: http://bit.ly/IBvideo or check out the public part of the site: http://ibo.epals.com.

 

2. Heinle textbook company has created an online community for their English learners to practice with native English speakers, again NOT in Facebook but in a social learning platform designed for safe use in schools. http://heinle.epals.com

 

These two are both great examples of how dedicated educators are moving the bar on social media in education, going way beyond the limited and flawed offerings of Facebook for schools. Hope you can include them in your talks!

 

Learn more about LearningSpace and how it's the most powerful way to have safe social media in the K12 classroom: http://learningspace.epals.com. Several videos from teachers and tech directors give insights there.

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Permalink Reply by Kelly Walsh on February 16, 2011 at 7:36am

Thanks for this excellent, informed, and thorough feedback Dr. Oates. I absolutely agree that there is a lot more to social media for education than mass market tools like Facebook and Twitter, and intend to share some of these education-specific tools in my presentation. There is still a focus on Facebook and Twitter, precisely because they are so popular, but I absolutely want to share these other tools and the important ways in they differ from the popular general purpose apps. Thank you as well for explaining a bit about the TRUSTe certification - I'd seen that beore but didn't really understand it's meaning.

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