Social Stuff Archives - Will Richardson

"Social Media is Here to Stay." Just Not in Classrooms, Please

March 9, 2009 By Will Richardson

danah boyd delivered a talk for Microsoft recently with the title “Social Media is Here to Stay,” and I’d classify it as must reading for educators wanting to get nudged a little further down the path to rethinking classrooms. I just love the matter of fact way she describes what has happened in terms of kids’ uses of social media and what it all means for us. The whole thing is definitely worth the 10-15 minutes or so that it takes to read it, but let me cut to the chase with this snip:

Specific genres of social media may come and go, but these underlying properties are here to stay. We won’t turn the clock back on these. Social network sites may end up being a fad from the first decade of the 21st century, but new forms of technology will continue to leverage social network as we go forward. If we get away from thinking about the specific technologies and focus on the properties and dynamics, we can see how change is unfolding before our eyes. One of the key challenges is learning how to adapt to an environment in which these properties and dynamics play a key role. This is a systems problem. We are all implicated in it – as developers and policy makers, as parents and friends, as individuals and as citizens. Social media is here to stay. Now we just have to evolve with it.

A couple of things strike me here, not the least of which is the de-emphasis on the tools and a focus instead on the “properties and dynamics” or the “network effects” that they bring about. I think it’s safe to say that we have made huge inroads in getting people to use the tools. Last week at NCTIES about half of a roomful of people raised their hands when I asked how many of them taught at schools where kids are blogging somewhere in the curriculum. (It turned out it wasn’t happening with a lot of regularity, but still…) Where we still have a long way to go, however, is in truly understanding that stuff danah is talking about. And that’s the important part, because that’s what should be driving our decision making and pedagogy around using these technologies in the classroom. But as I’ve said many times before, that’s the hard part, because it really does involve some buy in on the part of teachers in terms of changing their own practice.

But there is another telling passage in this piece that really got my brain thinking. When talking about how kids don’t really use Twitter very much because it’s so much more of a public space, danah writes

Teens are much more motivated to talk only with their friends and they learned a harsh lesson with social network sites. Even if they are just trying to talk to their friends, those who hold power over them are going to access everything they wrote if it’s in public. While the ethos among teens is “public by default, private when necessary,” many are learning that it’s just not worth it to have a worrying mother obsess over every mood you seek to convey. This dynamic showcases how social factors are key to the adoption of new forms of social media.

It’s funny (not) how when I read that “those who hold power over them” part I immediately thought of schools and the aversion we have to kids creating in public, social spaces. Kids are being driven to become more private in a world where transparency and openness create huge learning opportunities for those that know what to do with them.

Make sure to read the five properties of social media and the three social dynamics that danah says have been “reconfigured” by social media. And then think about the idea that

All of this means that we’re forced to contend with a society in which things are being truly reconfigured. So what does this mean? As we are already starting to see, this creates all new questions about context and privacy, about our relationship to space and to the people around us.

Those are the questions that we have to be examining deeply for ourselves as educators. And right now, those are the questions that few schools really want to have any serious discussions about in terms of the implications on school culture and curriculum. As systems, we’re not even close to getting on the reconfiguration road.

Well, most of us aren’t, at least:

The "Added Value of Networking"

March 4, 2009 By Will Richardson

From the “Building the Compelling Case Department” comes this piece in the Harvard Graduate School of Education magazine Ed. titled “Thanks for the Add. Now Help Me with my Homework.” This is another one of those pieces you’ll want to print out, xerox, and put in your administrators’ mailboxes. (Yes, my cynicism gene is in full gear.) They will like it because a) it’s from Harvard (ooooohhh) b) it’s based on research (more ooooohhhs) and c) it’s from Harvard.

Seriously, there has been a run of these of late, articles by traditionally reputable institutions that advocate (gulp) the use of social networks by teachers. And lord knows we need them. I sat in on a recent presentation by a union representative who told teachers not to e-mail students individually. (Group e-mails were ok, however.) And, as I recounted earlier, I’ve been in a couple of conversations of late with teachers whose state associations are basically telling them not to even create a Facebook profile for fear of litigation. We could spend hours discussing the challenges here; I’d rather focus on the slight breeze beginning to blow at our backs, especially in this article. Here are some of the compelling points to highlight.

First, kids are already using these spaces to learn, though there are huge opportunities for us to teach them how to to do it well:

Greenhow has found a virtual creative writing boom among students spending long hours writing stories and poetry to paste on their blogs for feedback from friends, or creating videos on social issues to bring awareness to a cause. Far from media stories about cyber bullying, meanwhile, she found that most students use the medium to reach out to their peers for emotional support and as a way to develop self-esteem. One student created a video of his intramural soccer team to entice his friends to come to his games. Another created an online radio show to express his opinions, then used Facebook to promote a URL where friends could stream it live, and then used one of Facebook’s add-in applications to create a fan site for the show.

They are learning skills that will serve them well in the future:

The kind of skills students are developing on social networking sites, says Greenhow, are the very same 21st century skills that educators have identified as important for the next generation of knowledge workers — empathy, appreciation for diversity of viewpoints, and an ability to multitask and collaborate with peers on complex projects. In fact, despite cautionary tales of employers trolling social networking sites to find inappropriate Halloween pictures or drug slang laced in discussion forums, many employers are increasingly using these sites as a way to find talent. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers cited this spring in The New York Times found that more than half of employers now use SNSs to network with job candidates. The website CareerBuilder.com even added an application to allow employers to search Facebook for candidates. “Savvy users say the sites can be effective tools for promoting one’s job skills and all-around business networking,” says the Times.

No one, however, is teaching them how to use these tools well:

What was more surprising to her, however, is how few teachers were using the Internet at all — and even fewer were aware of, much less using, social networking sites, despite their heavy usage by students. “It is the kids who are leading the way on this,” she says. “They are forming networks with people they meet every day as well as people they have barely met. If we can’t understand what kids are doing and integrate these tools into a classroom, what kind of message are we sending them? I think we’ll see an even bigger disconnect than already exists.”

As such, the kids are asea:

Even so, with the exceptions like Theresa Sommers, few students were actually using these sites for the purpose they were ostensibly created for — namely, networking with strangers in their intended college or career field. “The networking aspects weren’t even on their radars,” says Greenhow, who argues for a role in educators and guidance counselors in nudging students to take advantage of these opportunities. “Kids are conceiving of reaching out to others outside of school, they are getting there. What teachers can bring from their mindset is the added value of networking.”

The solution? We have to suck it up and get our brains around this for ourselves:

If that is going to be possible, however, first teachers must learn from the students’ mindsets — that is, rolling up their sleeves and creating Facebook profile themselves.

Look, I know it’s starting to sound like a broken blog-ord around here, but this really is the only way to put it: The world is changing because of social web technologies. Our kids are using them. No one is teaching them how to use them to their full learning potential, and ultimately, as teachers and learners, that’s our responsibility. To do that, we need to be able to learn in these contexts for ourselves.

(Photo “Creating Networks” by carf.)

"Ambient Awareness"

September 8, 2008 By Will Richardson

Interesting article in the NY Times magazine section yesterday on the effects of Facebook and Twitter et. al. in terms of social awareness, friendship, and host of other aspects of how our lives are being affected by these technologies. A lot of it made me think, “yeah, that’s me,” especially parts like:

Many avid Twitter users â€” the ones who fire off witty posts hourly and wind up with thousands of intrigued followers â€” explicitly milk this dynamic for all itâ€™s worth, using their large online followings as a way to quickly answer almost any question. Laura Fitton, a social-media consultant…recently discovered to her horror that her accountant had made an error in filing last yearâ€™s taxes. She went to Twitter, wrote a tiny note explaining her problem, and within 10 minutes her online audience had provided leads to lawyers and better accountants. Fritton joked to me that she no longer buys anything worth more than $50 without quickly checking it with her Twitter network.

It’s not all pretty, obviously, (some interesting thoughts of what this means for kids which I hope to write about more later) but what intrigues me so much about what the article brings up and about all this stuff in general is simply that it’s different, and that we’re in the midst of learning what it means right now, all together. At the end of the day, that is still the pull of social learning with social online tools for me, the fact that that brain work is transparent. Sure, I like knowing where folks are or getting some snippets of their personal lives; that adds to the picture, no doubt. But what I really like is being able to tap into the thinking of hundreds of really smart, active, engaged people who are willing to share their work and their learning with me on a scale that was not possible even five years ago. (Maybe not even two years ago.) How I manage and navigate all of that to the maximum benefit is always a struggle, but it’s a struggle that I enjoy greatly.

Teachers Walking Out? Students Got it Covered.

March 30, 2008 By Will Richardson

So what do you do if you are a student in Nashua, NH and along with your community, you’re staring a teacher walkout in the face?

Well, you put together a whole slew of Read/Write Web tools and get ready to cover the event, everything from a Facebook group to a video channel to a blog. Here is the deal according to the Facebook page:

A team of students from both Nashua High Schools, skilled in video production, computer editing, webcasting, and Internet social networking have established an off-campus production center to keep the community informed, moment-to-moment, in the event of a Nashua Teacher’s Union job action. The student center will webcast daily, upload video interviews and other footage constantly. The team will employ video chat, instant messaging, and social networking activity through sites such as Facebook to keep in touch with their audience.

And the kids seem to get what the possibilities are:

“What people donâ€™t see is how this situation is impacting the students.” said Korey O’Brien, producer. â€œWe have first amendment rights, and as citizens in a democracy have an obligation to get involved.” O’Brien believes that students can be objective: “Given the extreme opinions on both sides that I’ve read about in the newspaper, it should be easy for us to offer a more reasonable viewpoint. If we broadcast the student’s perspective, perhaps our voices will affect how the issue is resolved.”

They’ve got over 230 members in the Facebook group since Thursday, a half a dozen videos up already, and according to Nicole Tomaselli who sent me the link, they’ve got quite a following already.

The Nashua teachers have been modeling the uses of these tools for quite some time. I’ve had a link to their YouTube channel on my presentation wiki for over a year now. (Check out this video from their “Education Worth Paying For” series.) I have no idea if these kids have been “taught” to use these tools for the intended purpose or if they’ve recognized it on their own, but I think this is an amazingly cool example of kids doing real work for real audiences, the same audiences which will, in the end, assess the effectiveness of their work.

So where is this in your currciulum?

Social Networks (No) vs. Social Tools (Yes) in Schools

January 16, 2008 By Will Richardson

Earlier I Tweeted that this post by danah boyd might be the most important blog post I’ve read of 2008 thus far and now, after reading it through for the fourth time, I’m thinking it might stay that way for a while. It’s important to me because it clarifies a lot of my thinking about social networks in schools yet leaves me with a number of other important questions that I struggle to answer.

I read both sides of the debate over the potentials of social networking in schools at the Economist, and while I obviously agree more with Ewan‘s view that â€œIt’s more about helping learners become more world-aware, more communicative, learning from each other, understanding first hand what makes the world go around,â€ I have to admit to feeling a bit of â€œstarry-eyednessâ€ about the description of how this will all play out. I’m not so sure I agree that â€œexponential adoption of the â€˜new webâ€™ is only round the corner,â€ or that this new generation of â€œBebo-boomersâ€ (ugh) will suddenly impart effective pedagogy in classrooms simply because they will be â€œmarrying their inbuilt capacity with social networks to the theory of sound educational practice.â€ (It would be nice if I saw more evidence of teacher prep courses actually teaching them to do that.)

But all of that is pretty much besides the point.

danah adds a much needed focus: there is a difference between social tools and social networking, and she argues quite compellingly that social networks have no place in the classroom.

â€œSocial network sites do not help most youth see beyond their social walls. Because most youth do not engage in “networking,” they do not meet new people or see the world from a different perspective. Social network sites reinforce everyday networks, providing a gathering space when none previously existed.â€

Reading through the rest of the post makes clear that for most kids, what they do online is simply an extension of what they do in physical space. They interact with primarily the same groups, and, as danah has argued in the past, they use SNS as a way to make up for the dearth of opportunities to socialize that our kids have today. She writes:

I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why social network sites (or networking ones) should be used in the classroom. Those tools are primarily about socializing, with media and information sharing there to prop up the socialization process (much status is gained from knowing about the cool new thing). I haven’t even heard of a good reason why social network site features should be used in the classroom. What is the value of knowing who is friends with who or creating a profile when you already know all of your classmates?

And this:

I’m not saying that social network sites have no value. Quite the contrary. But their value is about the kinds of informal social learning that is required for maturation – understanding your community, learning the communicate with others, working through status games, building and maintaining friendships, working through personal values, etc. All too often we underestimate these processes because, traditionally, they have happened so naturally. Yet, what’s odd about today’s youth culture is that we’ve systematically taken away the opportunities for socialization. And yet we wonder why our kids are so immature compared to kids from other cultures. Social network sites are popular because youth are trying to take back the right to be social, even if it has to happen in interstitial ways.

Often in my presentations I ask how many folks are teaching MySpace or Facebook in their schools. Not teaching with MySpace, but teaching the literacies of networking through the lens of a SNS. Rarely do more than a few hands go up. I wonder what would happen if we contextualized our approach not in the fears that our kids will get themselves in trouble by using these sites but, instead, in the spirit of encouraging them to experience the socialization that danah speaks of. Not that we invade their spaces or friend them, but that we acknowledge the importance of Facebook in their lives, stop pretending like it doesn’t exist, and include it in the discussion of what’s important in life.

The key thinking for me, however, is about the difference between social tools and social networks. To be honest, I find Facebook and even Ning hard to like in my own personal learning practice. They seem redundant to me in some sense, I guess, replicating in large measure what I already find so powerful in this â€œsmall piecesâ€ suite of tools that I already use for social and learning purposes. And, in a lot of ways, and this may be ignorance, hubris, snobiness (or something much more disturbing), I feel like it’s almost cheating, like the hardest and best work is building that network node by node through blogging and reading and creating and developing those relationships with all the messiness that the Web allows for. I know, I know…there is a lot of that going on too in SNSs. But it feels too easy sometimes, like it’s moving into an apartment instead of building a house. You don’t learn too much about the way the thing works or how all the pieces fit. And you don’t learn all those building skills either. Yes, I’ve come around to the idea that much of what we need to know to flourish with these tools is nothing more than solid reading and writing literacy. But there still seems to me to be a network literacy as well, something that stands apart from simply reading and writing, something that deals with our ability to create and find and connect dots.

So yeah, I agree. Social networks as they are currently defined and delivered aren’t for schools. But using social tools to teach our students to build their own networks, networks that go beyond simply socializing with the people they already know has to be.

Technorati Tags: danahboyd, socialnetworking

Social Networking in Schools Gets a Boost from NSBA

August 10, 2007 By Will Richardson

This has already been widely blogged, but the fact that the National School Boards Association is encouraging schools to take another look at the use of social networks in classrooms is big, big news. And I have to tell you, after reading through the results of a study NSBA undertook, it all of a sudden feels like their be a moment close at hand where “innovation” (as Chris puts it) might be possible.

While the study confirms that the risks of the Internet are overblown, here’s the finding that really raised my eyebrows:

Social networking may be advantageous to students â€” and there could already be a double standard at work. 37% of districts say at least 90% of their staff are participating in online communites of their own â€” related to education â€” and 59% of districts said that at least half were participating. “These findings indicate that educators find value in social networking,” the study notes, “and suggest that many already are comfortable and knowledgeable enough to use social networking for educational purposes with their students.”

To be honest, that’s not representative of the reality I’ve found as I’ve talked to teachers over the past couple of years. I think it would be interesting to see what the definition of “online community” is in this instance. Still, even if it’s defined very broadly, that’s an encouraging number. And I wonder how many of the students surveyed would affirm that their teachers are involved in these communities. How much modeling is going on? I’d be interested in what others think of that finding.

And here’s another finding that I found interesting:

In fact, 76% of parents expect social networking will improve their children’s reading and writing skills, or help them express themselves more clearly, according to the study, and parents and communities “expect schools to take advantage of potentially powerful educational tools, including new technology.”

Now that is very cool, and clearly gives an opening to this conversation on a broader scale.

It’s nice to get some good news on the social networking in schools front, isn’t it? Now we need to think about the best ways to move toward a systemic, K-12 integration of these tools into the curriculum.

Technorati Tags: social, education, learning, teaching, schools, nsba

My Harry Potter Moment(s)

July 24, 2007 By Will Richardson

So about 80% of the people on the plane to New Hampshire were reading Harry Potter last night. Well, ok, maybe 8 people, but it seemed like a lot. The guy next to me warned me when he sat down. “If you know the ending, I don’t want to hear it.” Between the hour long delay getting out in Philly and the hour long plane ride, he cruised through about 200 pages. Impressive.

When I got out of the terminal here in “Manchestah” to where the hotel shuttle was supposed to be, a woman who had arrived for the user group meeting I’m keynoting tomorrow recognized me (oy…t-shirt, two-day beard…oy) with, you guessed, it Harry Potter in hand. He’s everywhere.

Then today, in the midst of a workshop I was doing, I tweet to the network that we’re looking for the favorite Web 2.0 tools of the group. Within minutes, the tweets start coming in. I’m showing it real time in Twitter Camp. The people of the room are mesmerized. I’m trying to articulate what all of this means, the fact that in the midst of my sobbing at the Philly airport yesterday watching some soldiers come back from Iraq, greeted by their screaming children and affectionate wives, not being able to imagine what it must be like for them, that in the midst of that powerful moment I decided to Tweet the fact that I was sobbing.

I need help.

So anyway, in response to the tool question, Lucy Gray (who’s Twittering her way to Monterey, btw) responds with “How about Scribd?” and I’m like “How ’bout wha?” So I go there and try to take like one minute to make sense of what I’m looking at when I see someone has posted a .pdf of the entire Harry Potter book scanned in a page at a time.

All 638 pages.

And I’m doing this on screen as everyone is watching, and there are like audible gasps and reactions from the group and I’m getting pretty stunned, mumble something about copyright and intellectual property when all of a sudden I see this link underneath the .pdf that says “mp3,” and I’m going “this can’t be what I think it is” and so I click on the link and sure enough it starts downloading this huge file to iTunes which after a few minutes opens up and this female computer voice starts reading the last Harry Potter book through my computer speakers to the whole room. And there are a couple of women in the front who have their fingers in their ears saying “Ooooooommmmmm. Ooooooommmmmm.” so they can’t hear this voice which, if you really pay attention you can kinda get in the rhythm of things and follow along the story.

It’s surreal.

And amazing.

Have I mentioned lately, I love this stuff? I really, really do. Every day for me is like a little kid at Christmas, my eyes opened wide by what this interconnected life I’m leading brings my way. Today was, on balance, just too much fun.

I’m not worthy.

(Photo “The Circle is Complete” by Teban.)

Technorati Tags: harrypotter, learning, twitter, manchester

Learning from my Kids…Doll Web Sites

June 6, 2007 By Will Richardson

So this morning, when I walked through the living room to get my morning bowl of gruel, my daughter was planted in front of the computer with that “nothing can distract me from this” look on her face. This was a fairly unusual sight for 7:15 in the morning as she usually uses her metered computer time after school or in the evenings. And it was also unusual because she wasn’t busy outfitting her igloo on Club Penguin. Turns out it was some doll house site where she was designing and decorating a quite elaborate three-story mockup where, as best as I could figure, some virtual dolls live.

Of course the whole site was pink. Yuck.

I spent a some time watching her “play,” struck by the way she figured out how to move things around, and sensing the pride she was feeling for her creation. She has some pretty decent taste, I’d say, but way too much of an interest in shoes.

Later, my friend Warren Buckleitner pointed me to an article in today’s Times: “Doll Web Sites Drive Girls to Stay Home and Play.” And here’s the money quote:

Millions of children and adolescents are spending hours on these sites, which offer virtual versions of traditional play activities and cute animated worlds that encourage self-expression and safe communication. They are, in effect, like Facebook or MySpace with training wheels, aimed at an audience that may be getting its first exposure to the Web. While some of the sites charge subscription fees, others are supported by advertising. As is the case with childrenâ€™s television, some critics wonder about the broader social cost of exposing children to marketing messages, and the amount of time spent on the sites makes some child advocates nervous.

I’ve blogged about this before, this social networking with training wheels analogy, and I think this is another interesting example of it. (In fact rumor has it there will soon be a “Preschool 2.0” book coming out. I’m serious.) I struggle with the commercial aspects, which is why we opted for Club Penguin. And I definitely struggle with how much time my kids should spend online. But I see all of these shifts that I want them to be able to navigate, and while I certainly want them to spend a good chunk of their time getting dirty and scraped up outside, I also think helping them spend time in online environments has a fair amount of importance as well. Like many parents, however, I have no real context for knowing how much. All I could do was watch “Lost in Space.”

But I better figure it out:

â€œTheyâ€™re spreading rapidly among kids,â€ Mr. Bernoff said, noting that the enthusiasm has a viral analogy. â€œItâ€™s like catching a runny nose that everyone in the classroom gets.â€

At least, I hope, my own kids will have a certain level of inoculation from the constant conversations we’ve had about life online as they have been growing up.

Technorati Tags: shifts, dolls, learning, education

A Degree in Social Computing? Oh…The Irony

April 5, 2007 By Will Richardson

David points to the fact that the University of Michigan is offering a ~~M.A.~~ M.S.I. specialization in Social Computing (among other things):

Students pursuing a specialization in Social Computing learn to analyze online social interactions, both in online communities and in more diffuse social networks. They learn about features of social computing technologies so they can recognize opportunities to put them to use in new settings and make good choices about alternative implementations.

And this quote from one of the professors is pretty provocative, I think:

The depth of our curriculum in social computing is unparalleled. Rather than a single course as you might find in other programs, we offer a range of in-depth courses in the technologies and applications that are driving the Web 2.0 revolution.

So, does anyone else find this a little ironic? I mean how in the world would this particular degree “certify” anyone as a social computing specialist any better than, um, spending a year or so just actually becoming a part of social learning network, learning from the various teachers and conversations within it, and building a rich, online portfolio that illustrates your ability to be an online community manager, social network analyst, community organizer or any of the other job descriptions they list as possible outcomes? For, um, zero dollars?

Here’s the list of courses you have to take:

SI 508: Networks: Theory and Application (3 credits)
SI 532 Digital Government I: Information Technology and Democratic Politics (1.5 credits)
SI 583: Recommender Systems (1.5 credits)
SI 631: Content Management Systems (3 credits)
SI 679: Aggregation and Prediction Markets (1.5 credits)
SI 683: Reputation Systems (1.5 credits)
SI 684: eCommunities: Analysis and Design of Online Interaction Environments (3cr)
SI 689: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (3 credits)

And look at the Recommender Systems description as an example:

Recommender systems guide people to interesting materials based on information from other people. A large design space of alternative ways to organize such systems exists. The information that other people provide may come from explicit ratings, tags, or reviews, or implicitly from how they spend their time or money. The information can be aggregated and used to select, filter, or sort items. The recommendations may be personalized to the preferences of different users.

Do we really need a class in this? Might be more effective to head on over to Classroom 2.0 and start your own program.

I’ve said it many times, my blog, my participation in this network is my Ph.D. I know that my own experience won’t fit for everyone else. But how hard would it be to take the descriptions that U of Michigan offers, create a wiki page for each, and begin to find teachers and resources and build networks to create your own classroom “of unparalleled depth” to prepare you for a new, exiting future?

For, um, zero dollars?

Technorati Tags: social, learning, community, education, Michgan

The Emotional Side of Self-Learning

February 24, 2007 By Will Richardson

My good friend and new blogger Rob Mancabelli writes about the challenges of schooling in a world of extended, global connections and information in terms not just of the literacies this more complex environment demands but the emotional toll as well. His thoughts come on the heels of a conversation with a principal who was concerned that

students were seeking out and locating more and more emotionally packed information on their own time, often by themselves, causing them to come to our schools each day laden with a plethora of undiscussed feelings, questions and ideas.

It’s an interesting point, and not one that I’ve thought about much in terms of my own practice. In the six years that I’ve been slogging away at this now, I’ve come to a place where the underlying emotional messages of much of what I read get sifted out through a filter, though that’s not always the case, obviously. But to really get empathic and sit in the shoes of a teen-ager (or younger) with all of this, I wonder what types of coping mechanisms he or she might have.

Which brings me, once again, to the larger point: who is teaching them how to cope as self-learners both on an intellectual and emotional level? And can we as educators teach them if we ourselves aren’t coping? I’m in no way belittling the question that principal poses, but if she herself is working to solve these issues in her own practice, would she not better understand the pedagogies for teaching her students how to deal with the stresses? A lot of rhetorical questions, I know (which will once again make Tom Hoffman glad he’s not reading my blog any longer.)

I find it kind of interesting, also, that the one part of that quote above that really jumps out at me is the “often by themselves” part. At first blush, that seems pretty innocuous, but since much of what I read and access is brought to me through my network, as is the case here, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing this by myself as much. Rob has already lent some of his perspective and analysis to this, which in some ways, helps me cope with my own reaction to it. That’s the power of this in my life, and one reason why the whole concept of networked learning resonates so deeply for me. And why we need to teach our kids how to build networks of trusted sources they can turn to themselves for intellectual and emotional support in the process.

But how can we do that if we ourselves don’t?

Technorati Tags: literacy, learning, education, teaching, schooling

Worse Before it Gets Better

February 14, 2007 By Will Richardson

As I said earlier, I don’t have high hopes for this being the year that schools begin to embrace social software in systemic ways and that 2007 may pose more challenges to that thinking. Case in point a couple of items in the aggregator this morning. First, from Michael Stephens, it appears that Illinois is going after DOPA: The State Version. You know the drill…no social networking in libraries, schools, outhouses, etc. And this won’t be the last bill or the last state to try to put it through.

Second, Chris Lehmann points to an article in the New York Times yesterday titled “Teenagers Misbehaving, for All Online to Watch.” As you can imagine, it’s not a great advertisment for the transparency of the Web these days.

Most suburban teenagers, it seems, can rattle off a litany of the latest teens-gone-wild offerings as though they were the local multiplex listings: boys holding cellphones under the lunch table to photograph up girlsâ€™ skirts; an innocent kiss at a party posted out of context on an ex-boyfriendâ€™s Web site; someone bursting in on friends who are in the bathroom or sleeping, drinking or smoking; students goading teachers into tantrums; assaulting homeless people.

Lovely.

Chris expresses his concerns about what this all means, and notes, accurately, I think, that the stakes are getting higher, and he says that schools have to play a bigger role in educating kids about how to make “smart, safe and ethical choices.” The more I turn this in my own brain the more I get to the fact that this is cultural. It’s societal. And those of us who have whatever limited enlightenment into the workings of the world about these matters need to do more to educate all of our constituents.

Before any of this is going to get better, more folks who don’t have any concept of learning in social networks need to at least be shown the possibilities. Whether they embrace them into their own practice is something different altogether.

Technorati Tags: learning, DOPA, education

Pew on Tagging: Self-Organization Grows

February 1, 2007 By Will Richardson

Pew’s latest report on tagging doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises: 28% of Internet users tag, 7% on a typical day. Things on the folksonomy front are definitely taking some root. But even here there is evidence of a divide: taggers with broadband outnumber those without almost 2:1, and the higher your income and the better your education, the more you tag. (Interesting, though, that the race/ethnicity with the highest percentage of taggers is black, followed by Hispanic. Wonder what that means…)

Worth a read as well is the interview about tagging with David Weinberger that comes with the report. A couple of pull quotes to whet your appetite:

Maybe the most interesting thing about tagging is that we now have millions and millions of people who are saying, in public, what they think pages and images are about. That’s crucial information that we can use to pull together new ideas and information across the endless sea we’ve created for ourselves.

And:

We’ll also undoubtedly figure out how to intersect tags with social networks, so that the tags created by people we know and respect have more â€œweightâ€ when we search for tagged items. In fact, by analyzing how various social groups use tags, we can do better at understanding how seemingly different worldviews map to one another.

The whole self-organization meme is really interesting me of late. It’s crucial that our kids get their brains around it in effective ways. This quote from Donald Tapscott’s book Wikinomics speaks to it as well:

We are shifting from closed and hierarchical workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaborative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from inside and outside the firm (240).

I love the way that’s stated. Networked learning requires self-organization. I’m still constantly tweaking the way I tag and sort all of this information, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’m as effective as I could be. But it’s the process I learn from, and once again, the way I’m doing it now looks little like what’s happening in most classrooms I see…

Technorati Tags: tags folksonomy Weinberger Pew learning education

Kids + Social Networks = Learning (?)

January 11, 2007 By Will Richardson

Nice find by Christian Long of this short little blurb in Fast Company titled “Social Networking Evades Schools.” Seems NSBA surveyed schools and found that most don’t have a policy in place regarding the use of social networking sites, and, as you can probably guess, of those that do, most said the policy is to block access. Go figure. But the good news is that NSBA’s executive director seems to be getting it:

It is important to keep in mind that just blocking access to social web sites at school is not the end of the story. Most of the misuse of these sites takes place at home, but still affects the classroom. We have to teach our students about the safe and proper use of social web sites.

Well, that’s a start. Certainly, MySpace and Facebook should be in the curriculum to facilitate the conversation about everything that could go wrong. But what about to talk about everything that could go right? What about teaching them how to use social networking sites to connect to potential teachers, to publish their ideas, share content? What about making sure that they know how to leverage what MySpace offers?

The problem is that most educators still don’t “get” what these sites represent. But I found this excerpt of Steve Hargadon’s new podcast interview with Plano Assistant Superintendent Jim Hirsch to be spot on:

Our students of today, because of access to media, the internet, and instant messaging ‘no longer rely on a historical perspective to make decisions.’ The rely much more on their friends…

The social interactions that our students are having online are steeped in information gathering of one sort or another, as well they should be. Aren’t ours? Whether they know it or not, they need to understand the ins and outs of reputation networks and filters. And I’ll ask it again…who is teaching them?

From a parent perspective, I’ve started thinking about how social tools can be a part of my kids’ practice from early on. Yesterday, I set my seven and nine year old kids (and, um, myself) up with Club Penguin accounts, and in the context of doing so, we talked about what it means to be interacting with other real people online. Yes, they need to be careful, and we went through the don’ts. But they should also be willing to find friends to chat with, to play games with, to communicate with. When they’re old enough, I’ll help them set up their MySpace accounts, or whatever the social networking site du jour is. And I’ll also help them with del.icio.us and their blogs and whatever other online tools might serve them. (I just bought them their own .name domains yesterday…they’re gonna need a collection point.)

Point is, we have to do more than unblock. We have to do more than just teach them what not to do. We have to help them leverage the tools.

So, what’s in your policy?

Technorati Tags: club_penguin, social, education, filtering, learning