Social networking is a phenomenon that seems to be inescapable these days. While there are some people out there who still shy away from it by refusing to create their own Twitter or Facebook accounts, there are few ways in which they are still not affected by the participation of others. I can't help by think of my own dad who as a former high school principal was less than enthused and impressed by all the hype that Facebook had created. He had no interest in joining this social networking community until he attended a meeting for the Woodbridge High School Hall of Fame committee back in 2009 and learned what a perfect tool it was to reach out to former athletes and get the word out about the nominees they had decided on. He finally broke down and set up an account and now he is affectionately known as "Mr. Facebook" by many. Since retiring, he has remained a large part of the WSHS community and in the past year has launched massive campaign for a 50 year anniversary celebration. He has pretty much employed every facet that Facebook has to try and get the word out to the thousands of students and faculty from the past 50 years of the school's history. Through this window to the world, he has managed to sell thousands of dollars of "50 Years of WSHS" merchandise to help pay for this huge event, as well as to help support the athletic boosters.
In terms of using social networking in the classroom, it seems like that is an entirely different thing to consider. My county has recently "unblocked" Youtube so both teachers and students can access the multitude of videos that can be used daily to help make class lessons and projects interesting and engaging, but has still remained intent on keeping Facebook blocked (for what I think sounds like obvious reasons). Unfortunately, they have also blocked any types of blogs, which would make it difficult to create one for a classroom. I know there are ways to work around this by creating a blog on a program that is approved by the school board, and I am definitely interested in looking into those. All schools have their own Schoolfusion websites, which do have a feature for an open forum type page for students to post comments, thoughts, questions, and ideas as they relate to each teacher's class. I've used this before and it's been a neat tool to experiment with and my students have always seemed to enjoy it. I will have to see what other avenues I can explore to get more social networking in an educational way going on for my kids!
My parents were not big on the idea of using facebook for years, but they both created accounts years ago. When my dads 50th class reunion was coming up he became an avid user and stil to this day now that he is retired he is on it every day. My mom didn't get into it so much until this year (her 50th class reunion) and now she is after me to help her update everything and I have to help her in small bits because it is frustration to me, since as we all know Facebook updates and changes thing more commonly then one can keep up with.
ReplyDeleteFor using social media in school we a teacher used to be able to find ways around the 'block' to access things but now the county has cought on and reworked thier blocks. There was nothing that we were doing that wasn't for the benefit of the students, somtimes we all just wish we had a say in things to share why things were not all bad.
I agree with both of you - it is too bad how many things are blocked, but sometimes it does seem obvious why. I have started to just have students use their cell phones to get around obstacles if need be, and then they can save the web addresses to their personal devices. The biggest problem with this is that not every student has a phone (or a smart phone), which is an issue in most classrooms I would assume.
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