Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Computer based social networking is becoming an increasingly important feature of our society. One recent example is having astronauts in space tweeting about their experiences and answering questions. I also think about the relatively recent increase in my own dependence on the utilization of online communication in the form of e-mail, chat rooms, blogs, websites, and webinars. My own children log in to their e-mail and facebook accounts almost immediately when they get home and I have had to make rules so that they engage in activities that are not always online.
With this in mind, it is important that schools provide students with opportunities to learn effective and responsible use of social networking resources. Unfortunately in my district, many of these resources are currently blocked because our network infrastructure is intertwined with the military network. The resulting security protocols mean that almost all blogs, chats, wikis and commercial e-mail resources are blocked. Students and teachers cannot access facebook, Youtube, and pretty much any other resource that has the potential to contain any questionable content.

My school system has purchased a student e-mail service that allows for blogs and which filters all student email for inappropriate language or pictures. The vast majority of blocked email and pictures are false negatives but a small amount of inappropriate communication has been halted. The number and variety of blocked resources often make it necessary for educators and students to find information at home and transport it to school using data sticks or other means.

Some successes this year in my district include the use of Buzzword which is an Adobe product similar to Google Docs (www.acrobat.com). Since our district has extensive licenses with Adobe, it was easier to get it approved. We are still awaiting approval to use Google docs. Anyway, buzzword allows students to do word processing online and submit files to an educator’s drop box. The educator or others who the document is shared with can provide feedback on the document. It also allows students to collaborate on documents. In the classrooms we tested this with, all students had internet access at home and it became a very valuable resource. The days of corrupted documents on data sticks and other technical problems were practically eliminated by using the online resource. The one problem was slow internet access at one of my schools which limited its effectiveness at school.

Webquests have been utilized widely in my district but the number of blocked sites are making it more frustrating for educators. When teachers have the time and assistance to create their own webquests, the results are overwhelmingly positive.
Edublogs and Second Life are both currently blocked in my district. I am looking forward to using voice threads more in my district next school year. I had one student test it out by using it to create training resource for her yearbook staff.

I am of the belief that it is important to teach students how to responsibly use online social networking resources. When sites are just blocked, students do not learn anything except to look at the site when they get home where there is often little internet supervision. I would much rather students have the opportunity to develop the skills and attitudes to deal with inappropriate internet content in a supervised environment such as the classroom. Students are going to use social networking regardless of whether it happens at school or not. The benefit of using social networking resources in the classroom is that they will naturally help engage students and it will give them the opportunity to use the technology in a responsible and useful manner.