That said, I was a member on Tribe.net years ago, back when it was a thriving social community for music and culture. I only joined FaceBook last month in order to begin promoting and moving my Internet radio stations to the social media platform. Although I have a FaceBook account now, it contains only an extremely limited amount of information, and I don't use it that often to interact with people. Between work, grad school, and an extremely mobile 9 month old daughter, I just don't have the time. Or rather, I prefer to do a lot of other things with my time.
Professionally, I still see FaceBook and Twitter as a distraction, and that's something I just don't need. I now have a Linked In profile because I am searching for a new job; the school I currently work for is closing in June.
I've engaged Twitter as a necessary pursuit as well. I'm a little overwhelmed by the amount of information that comes over it, even though I only follow a handful of people. I have very divergent interests represented on Twitter (technology, music, my friends, and now this course), and so the pace feels a bit frenetic. Perhaps I'll get a handle on it as the course progresses.
As for students using social media in a learning context, my readings from the second session tell me that this is probably best left to the college level. Perhaps grades 11 and 12 in a controlled environment. While it's true that it's difficult to get authentic communication flowing in a walled garden situation, for Middle School students, this is most certainly the optimal choice. I'm not convinced that you can have primary-age students using FaceBook or Twitter in a classroom setting and have them be productive. You have to focus their attention and energy to the task at hand, and the walled garden approach can do that.
At Windrush School, some teachers utilize an in-house Moodle system to augment discussion in the classroom with an online forum. With this system, the teacher can monitor and guide student discourse to make sure it is germane and within the bounds of the school's communication mores.
Hi Maer,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your view point of social networking. I think it is very important to look at the different services with a careful eye. I have a facebook and I don't tend to use it much. I check in a few times a month to see if there is any information from friends that I may not heard about. A family friend had a baby and I am not sure I would have known otherwise. I do see that some people are not able to monitor their time on Facebook and that can certainly be an issue.
Professionally, Twitter has actually saved me a lot of time and helped me to be more efficient with keeping up on edtech. I make sure to follow leaders in the edtech world and then once every day, I go thru tweets and mark the ones that I want to investigate further. Then when I have time, I go through those. I know I have gotten information that I would not know if I leave it up to me reading magazines or online info. So for that, it helps me.