Social Networks & Blogs: Necessary Good and Evil?

It seems that in today's global society, social networking and blogging have become a necessary evil of sorts. I myself have a Facebook and a blog, and while I use (and enjoy) them on a daily to weekly basis, I also sometimes wish I had never signed up for them. My mixed feelings towards Facebook, and social networking and blogging in general, have been echoed by many a family member or friend of mine. On the one hand, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you quick access to loved ones' lives. You can keep in touch with friends and family near and far, easily contacting them with a comment or wall/blog post. It is easier to send out invitations and photos through these sites. Sharing news and keeping people updated (and being updated about others) only requires the click of a button. Information is readily available and shared as well. I have found out about countless, interesting sites and events through Facebook and Twitter posts. All of these pros however, can also be cons at times. Privacy, no matter how much of it is guaranteed by a site, is compromised on the web. Strangers can gain access to personal information and intimate going-ons in one's life through social networking and blogging sites. This access has caused children to be preyed upon by adults, as well as vicious cyber-bullying among peers. Children and teens are most vulnerable to the dangers of social networking and blogging, yet those groups make up a large majority of users.

I feel that it is necessary to teach young learners how to be safe and smart online, especially when it comes to social networking and blogging. In my current school, our educational technologists explicitly teach internet safety skills to young elementary aged students through middle schoolers. Blogging and social networking are introduced as tools that can be used to connect learners socially and academically. For example, middle school students in my school are engaged in projects in which they create profiles and socially network and blog as characters from literature and famous, historical mathematicians and scientists- all in order to gain greater perspective into their lives. Students need to be prepared to use these tools in their own lives as they get older. The potential for use of social networking and blogging in learning communities is great, and it must be approached with caution and care.

Teaching for Understanding with Technology

Wiske asserts at the beginning of Chapter One that a universal dilemma across schools is the lacking in understanding that teaching and learning with technology are complex processes that must be critically examined prior to implementation. She mentions how schools often buy new technologies first, train educators so that they know how to use them, but then fail to engage in discourse and study around the ways that technology can serve as a tool to enhance understanding. Being purposeful with technology use in my classroom is something that I am continuing to work on. Fortunately, I have a technology integrator/educator assigned to my grade who pushes in for "Technology time" and assists my colleagues and I when we have ideas about how to integrate technology in our classrooms. For example, we are currently planning a Poetry showcase at the end of our Poetry unit, and our educational technologist is helping us use podcasting/Garageband to record students' poems. Using podcasting as a tool to enhance fluency, expression and divergence in ways that students think poetry needs to be shared (i.e. it can be spoken and not just written to be enjoyed) are purposeful choices that were decided on after much thought and collaboration within our team. Wiske's ideas about teaching for understanding with technology remove all of the emphasis on teachers as sources or knowledge to the students. They assume more responsibility and are held accountable for their contributions when technology is utilized in ways that promote collaboration and cooperative problem solving. Wiske proposes that within "reflective, collaborative communities", not only are skills developed, but students can also be creative in their problem solving and means for demonstrating understanding and sharing knowledge. I would argue that the same idea could be applied to the ways in which educators can work together to figure out best use of educational technologies to support students' learning.

Community Building and Communicating with Technologies in the Classroom

During the last few classes, we have collaborated in small groups using Webspiration and Google Spreadsheets. While I have figured out the logistics of concept mapping, I am having a more difficult time navigating the spreadsheet software. Fortunately, working in groups means that we all bring different strengths and areas needing improvement to the table, so I am hoping that this week in class, a classmate with more expertise in Spreadsheets can teach me how to better manipulate data. While there are benefits to grappling with issues independently, I definitely learn quicker when someone shows me how to do something and then allows me the freedom to attempt and explore. My own struggle illustrates the necessity for students to learn how to collaborate and work cooperatively with others, a point that Jonassen makes in his book, especially in his chapters on community building and communication. It's nothing novel or secretive that students learn from one another when they work together, and the case is no different when thinking about technology integration in the classroom. The days of working alone are no longer useful or relevant in a society that is being increasingly linked and globalized through technologies. Whether through blogs, wikis, messaging or forums, information is being shared and co-created by adults and children with internet access.

Throughout the readings for this week, I was most interested in how wikis and blogging can provide students with a space to demonstrate their understanding and respond to the ideas of others via virtual collaboration. For instance, I love the idea of students learning another language communicating with native speakers on the web. I imagine how much quicker and more easily I could have picked up Italian, had I been able to converse with Italian students rather than spending years memorizing vocabulary and grammatical rules from textbooks! Jonassen also writes about the benefits of podcasting as a means of communication. This year, my second graders are learning how to create a podcast on Garageband. We are planning to have them record a podcast of an original poem they will publish at the end of our poetry unit. Podcasts can be a great tool to reduce the laborious process of writing that some children struggle with, as well as a useful way to share and communicate.

The Case for Webtools In and Out of the Classroom

*Note: I thought I published this post last week, but I had only saved it as a draft. Oh, technology! Thus, this entry is in reaction to Jonassen's Chapter 5.

It is in this course that I first encountered the concept of "mindtools," and I am making an effort to really understand the difference between use of technology in the classroom and use of mindtools in the classroom. Jonassen makes it very clear that casual integration of technologies is vastly diverse from engaging students in ways to purposefully model with technologies. He emphasizes how students must be thinking while using technology rather than mindlessly doing so, and it is this active cognition piece that deepens student learning. When building models to represent their thinking, students problem solve, reason logically and critically and synthesize and apply their prior knowledge, making new connections as well.

I was most interested in how students can model their knowledge with concept maps. As a current teacher, I am hoping that this course provides me with ideas for practical application of technologies in the classroom. I thought that Jonassen makes a solid case for ways that the mindtool of concept maps can be used by students to model, organize and analyze their thinking about big concepts and problems. In my current school, I've seen educational technologists and classroom teachers partner together to introduce older elementary aged students to concept mapping with Kidspiration. I've noticed that it is a very effective tool that students can use to brainstorm collaboratively or individually when beginning a new project. They can flesh out their ideas and have a visual representation of their thinking, which especially benefits visual learners but also most students in general. I'd like to figure out how and when I could use Kidspiration in the primary grades, this year with my second graders. I'm thinking that it might be most relevant and useful when my students plan for and write nonfiction books later on in the year. However, I'm also thinking that I could model how to use concept mapping as a tool right now, while we brainstorm about poetry, our current unit. I can model on our Smartboard a concept map showing what students already know about poetry, adding new pieces to it as we learn more through upcoming minilessons. It would be great for my students to see how their conceptual understanding of poetry will grow and change throughout the unit.    

Keeping Up

Teaching in a school that is committed to innovative integration of technology, I've become more ed tech savvy in the past 2+ years than ever before (in high school and college, I mostly used my computer for word processing and personal social networking, not much else). Using technology well as an educator can be difficult and often overwhelming. We have so much access, so much tech support and so many innovative options, that I've found myself (many times) struggling to keep up (and catch up), while trying to balance and remain on top of everything else related to my teaching. Google docs, google sites, ed tech tools, oh my!

I've been involved in some amazing projects with technology at my current school and have been blown away by the positive ways in which my students have responded and adapted to using technology as a tool for learning. I'd like to grow in my personal comfort level with technology and my knowledge of how to effectively integrate it into my classroom. I'm hoping that some of the tools we explore in class will move me forward in this process, inspiring me to problem solve and be more creative and purposeful with all the tech we are so fortunate to have access to in our school.

As for the sites we've signed up for this week, I've used Flickr and Kidspiration (not Webspiration) in the past, and I've dabbled in blogging here and there. So far, I've experimented a bit with Delicious, and it's already helped me export, tag and organize some of my many bookmarks! I still haven't played around with the "social experience" side to it yet. Small steps...