Overcoming lame

  • Posted by aiya
  • June 23, 2008

The past few days I’ve been poking around social networks. Wikipedia lists 124 major social networking sites. I belong to five of them:

  • LinkedIn (where I connect with colleagues)
  • MySpace (where I find old classmates)
  • Twitter (where I read and post minutia…and you can follow me)
  • Geni (where I try to get my family to use the Internet for something other than AOL mail)
  • Facebook (where I actually socialize)

I also belong to three more that haven’t made it on the list yet:

  • Dopplr (where I connect with people based on where I’m traveling)
  • LearnHub (where I connect with people about learning technologies)
  • Brightkite (where I connect with people based on location)

Oh, and then there’s the social life offline, too!

Oh, what social critters we are. It’s no surprise that we’re bringing one of our favorite “real world” activities - socializing - into the digital realm.

In education, we try to look at online social networking models to see how we can use it to engage learners through community. Unfortunately, FERPA laws make it difficult to avidly explore ways to use popular social networks in instruction. There are a few ways around this:

  • Make participating in a social network optional and have students sign a release form
  • Have students only use avatars in social networks whose avatar identity is only known by the instructor
  • Have students use a social network, but restrict it to a single section of a course

It seems to me, though, that all of these “solutions” defeat the purpose of a social network. If the point is to keep in contact with people you know, meet people you don’t know, and create an online community of friends, how can any restriction allow students to have authentic social networking experience? They’re already part of many social networks and, frankly, a restricted and specialized social network is going to pale in comparison to their more authentic experiences. This is a conundrum education experiences all the time - how can we utilize the latest technologies within the boundaries of education without coming across as lame?

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June 23rd, 2008
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
John Philip Green
Posted on:
June 23, 2008 at 10:39 am

Amen!

We are concerning ourselves with this all the time, as we continue to try to make LearnHub relevant to academic education.

So far, LearnHub is proving successful in informal learning and subjects like SAT test prep but we’d love to make it work better in other areas.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Tim Wright
Posted on:
June 23, 2008 at 11:05 am

There’s a little push in the developer community to connect in person a little more with BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/). There’s one coming up in Raleigh around August.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
Bob McCluskey
Posted on:
June 25, 2008 at 4:44 am

FERPA does not govern information that a student shares voluntarily. It seems to me that the concept of a “social network” sort of implies voluntary participation. A school or teacher can ask a student to join a social network with no FERPA implications. Unless the teacher intends to disclose information about a student that is not defined by the school as “directory information,” no release from the student is necessary.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
The Geni Team
Posted on:
June 25, 2008 at 5:01 pm

First, thank you for the mention, we appreciate it. Second, we really like your movement towards introducing students to social networking. We at Geni, are starting to work with some schools, because we feel that our social network is a great way to bring families closer through a positive learning experience. You can read one teacher’s experience while using Geni with her class, here: http://blog.geni.com/2008/05/schools-embrace.html Also, if anyone has any suggestions for us or would like to learn more about using Geni in a classroom environment, feel free to contact us. Once again, thank you for including us.

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Aiya101 » Taking cues from the Twitterverse
Posted on:
September 24, 2008 at 11:56 am

[...] lame. And if you’ve been reading this blog, you already know that I think education needs to overcome lame. In no way could a clicker ever be considered a sexy gadget. So here’s an idea: combine sexy [...]