I think it is a given that young people are going to connect online. All of the research indicates that young people are flocking to the free online communities like facebook at an unprecedented rate. As educators, parents, concerned citizens, the big question for us all is not “should our kids be online in social networks”. This is beginning to be a bit like asking “should our kids be able to mix with others in the playground?” The world of online and offline is really beginning to blur and let’s not forget that our kids are mostly connecting up with people that they know already when they go online. The problem for adults is knowing what they are doing online and whether and how to support them.

I guess a big part of this is knowing what sort of things to support youth doing online. This is the reason for the explosive growth in online communities for anything from horseriding to learning mathematics.

Many schools are beginning to switch onto the fact that they are trying to force their students into a “walled garden” to access learning that is tightly controlled and dictated by the school whilst the students themselves would rather be a part of a wider community of learners.

It will be interesting to observe the conflict that is going to continue to build between trying to get students to spend time in the school created network whilst the students and their parents are being marketed to by increasingly sophisticated and engaging networks of interest outside of the school community.

After all, we all only have so much time to dedicate to any sort of network online or offline.

Do any of you have stories of this conflict arising already in your schools? Who’s to say that they learn more from your closed network than the fascinating and engaging networks that extend across the planet?

Photo: Links http://www.flickr.com/photos/pocphotography/3274242344/

I have copied a summary here for your interest:

Some think it is okay to include students as friends but are very circumspect; others think that it is crossing the line between private and professional lives, particularly with current students; others set up particular pages for particular purposes; others think it has no place in their lives.

Most people said that if they got a request from a student to be a ‘friend’ they took care to “let them down” lightly but some said they just ignored the request. It was suggested that if a student asks to be your friend, that you befriend their parents instead. Some said they would agree to a student asking them, but would never ask a student.  Others asked if the young people even want us in this place, and if it is our role or responsibility to be available to students 24/7 in this manner.  It was asked whether we take the time to consider the time and management aspects of setting up a page, even for a specific purpose.

There was general agreement that we should not condone breaching the T&C of 13+ and that if this was known to have occurred, it could become a teachable moment on Internet safety.  It was agreed that Internet safety and ethics need to be taught explicitly, and information needs to be sent to parents about their responsibilities in this.  Ignoring breaches was seen as a breach of professionalism. However, if we do have FB pages that students can access, then we need to model the appropriate behaviour as part of that explicit teaching.

There was advice about the legal aspects of digital duty-of-care, and some schools do, indeed, have policies about appropriate out-of-school interactions with students. Others asked for examples of these policies, particularly relating to interactions in the Web 2.0 environment..

Some suggested that to be online with a students in this environment was like being alone in a classroom with them, although others thought that it was making any interactions more visible. There was concern about inappropriate posts being made either by students or your other friends, or being made to the students, and the students being able to access inappropriate material by going to your friends’ accounts.  (It is this aspect that means that these sites -and most Web 2.0 tools – are blocked to students in most government schools, at least, in Australia.)

Someone suggested that it can work both ways – if a student is maligning the school or another student, then it shows up on the teacher’s page and the school can deal with it.

There were many, many concerns about privacy and how and where  information you posted might end up.  Someone pointed out that the first thing the media does if they get a sniff of a story is to troll Facebook and MySpace et al to see if the person has a page.

A previous discussion about what would be appropriate for reaching the under-13s for library news etc suggested a ning was a better environment because it could be more easily managed. Even though this also has the 13+ restriction, it was suggested a responsible adult could create additional accounts over which they have control. Reading Clay Shirky’s excellent book ‘Here Comes Everybody’, which explains everything you could possibly want to know about social networks and tools, was also suggested.

And finally, it was suggested that Facebook Group could be established where only the members of the class are invited..  Members of the group do not need to be “friends” with one another in order to be a part of the one group.  A student is the administrator of the group (along with the teacher) and everyone can post resources for our class within the group’s site. Discussions have started on the current assessment pieces which the teacher occasionally logs into to make sure they are heading in the right direction.  Students also post links to resources which can be annotated and due dates are shown in the calendar of both the group and personal pages.

An enriching discussion

Barbara

Barbara Braxton
Teacher Librarian
COOMA NSW 2630
AUSTRALIA

Photo: Facebook Touchgraph http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/3293404080/

Perhaps it was inevitable, given the US reliance on test results via the NCLB legislation and this region’s reliance on similar high stakes testing such as the IB’s Diploma Programme, that entities would come along and do nothing but develop online courses that are highly professional, multimedia enhanced and capable of ensuring test results that are higher than for students in regular classrooms. One of these that I have been following for some time now is the Virtual High School. I have had some dealings with the VHS via Robyn Lynch of Shekou International School. I was not surprised to read of the VHS in Clayton Christensen’s latest book Disrupting Class. Interestingly, I came across a presentation by Jeffery Beard of the International Bacalaurette Organisation about widening access to the IB Diploma Programme via online delivery of content.  I have it on my “to do list” to contact Jeffrey and see if he would like to attend our conference in October and discuss this with the wider group. Given the strong shift to the IB DP course in this part of the world, it would seem a good fit for schools here.

This Tech Cruch article is very upbeat about an online test preparation startup, Knewton, that is turning a lot of heads for its model of trying to capture a big slice of the market via paying top money to expert teachers and using powerful adaptive software to tailor learning for the student.

Knewton is not the first to try to take on the traditional schools via an online model. Brightstorm, iKnow, Grockit, PrepMe and many others have tried in the same space. Knewton seems to have a bit more going for it than most, especially in the US market.

Based in New York City, Knewton raised $2.5 million last May from Accel Partners, First Round Capital, Reid Hoffman, Ron Conway, and other angels. The company was very much under the radar until it showed up as a finalist for the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge last month (see video below). The company is built entirely on Amazon’s cloud computing services (EC2 for computation, S3 for storing video tutorials, and Mechanical Turk for fine-tuning its test questions). Actually, the Startup Challenge already has its winner: Yieldex. Knewton did win the popular vote, though.

The founder and CEO, Jose Ferreira, used to be an executive at Kaplan, the test prep giant. Knewton’s two chief test designers, Len Swanson and Robert McKinley, wrote the scoring algorithms for the adaptive learning tests used by, respectively, the Educational Testing Service (which administers the SAT, GRE, and AP tests) and ACT.

Adaptive learning tests are taken on computers. The questions get progressively harder or easier depending on each student’s answers. Thus, they adapt to each student’s knowledge and abilities. Knewton is taking the adaptive learning concept and applying it first to online test preparation services. It is not cheap. Right now it offers a year-long subscription to prepare for the GMAT test that costs $1,390. The company guarantees a minimum 50-point jump in a student’s test score or their money back.

Given the presence of Kaplan and many of the other test prep centres in this region, it may be able to make inroads in this lucrative area.

This is an interesting space to watch. I look forward to seeing if it starts to have an effect here.