Several of my coworkers and I were having a conversation recently about the staggering number of people who have myspace and facebook accounts. Someone brought up the point that it would be great if these sites could be used for more educational purposes rather then just posting pictures and collecting friends. A challenge to teaching in today's modern, fast paced world is to get and keep student's interest on the lesson. Using something "cool" like MySpace or Facebook in the lesson might get students interested much more quickly. I found a video about a study that was done at the University of Minnesota that addressed the benefits of using these social networking sites on students.
http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/newsservice/Multimedia_Videos/social_network.htm
I thought one of the most interesting comments in the video was that parents and teachers help students learn how to use other "dangerous" tools, like how to drive a car, and that teaching with and learning about MySpace should be handled the same way. I'm sure this would be be biggest obstacle for a teacher wanting to use these sites in their classroom. Who knows, maybe in the future we'll see more teachers using social networking sites in their classrooms!
(I do apologize for not posting the video here directly. I think there was something wrong with the embed code on their site because it wasn't working!)
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This is definitely a very debated topic in the world of education. One educator from PA expressed his thoughts with this: "Just one person's opinion on the Facebook possibility.... First, there is
really no need to teach students how to use Facebook (unless we emphasize Internet protocol and ethics), since most students learn how to network quite well on their own. There are so many more mportant things we can teach our students than what they already se. That would be equivalent to instituting a course in how to use the cell phone. In CFF we are not only trying to reach every tudent, but we are trying to get every student to engage in rigorous academic pursuits.
As to improving student/teacher communication, I always considered the
class to be an organism in and of itself, and, yes, I had thousands of
conversations with students outside of that structure, but I was always
careful to choose my meeting places with great discretion--at least I tried
to. The venues a professional chooses are important. If the communication
factor was a real plus, would we encourage doctors to use Facebook to communicate with their patients? ... Exactly. Professionalism has its own
demands and restrictions as well as benefits.
Novice teachers, especially, sometimes enter the classroom wanting to be their students' friends. I did not want to be their friend. They have plenty of friends. What they *need *is what their friends can't or won't for lack of experience be able to tell them. I wanted to be the person, the adult, they could go to for guidance and someone whom they knew genuinely cared about them as people, but I did not want to be their friend. I think that when a student asks an opinion of a teacher, it is because he or she is
looking for an adult perspective. My concern is that it might be very easy to sink into the abyss of equality in hyperspace elationships, and the important distinction between instructor and student would be blurred....as
in the example Marcie provided for us. Again, just one person's opinion."
As with all technology, some tools will be used mightily in a classroom, but if we give access to that tool to another teacher, inappropriate things will happen. I like this educator's view in that he asks, "Why?" Why do we need to use the tool? What are we teaching the students? If there are valid reasons to this question, then maybe the next question becomes, "Who is going to be using this tool? Do they know how to appropriately use the tool?" One thing we need to be cautious about is this: Not ALL teachers know how to use the tools correctly. If this is the case, the tool (ie. Myspace) should not be used until the teacher has demonstrated proficient and professional use.
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