The Bewitching Nature of Social Networking Remember the old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?” Social networking, according to the Common Craft video of the same name, refers to the process of establishing contacts with individuals through other individuals in hopes of accomplishing a goal. The more people you connect with at social functions, the more likely you are to meet your spouse, next boss, future business partner, etc. Ever watch those old Bewitched episodes?
The advertising executive, Darrin, is always bringing clients home for dinner, or golfing or having drinks with the boss at the country club. That’s social networking.
See, Darrin makes a good impression on the boss. The boss asks him to entertain a client at dinner.
The client asks Darrin to go golfing and introduces Darrin to his best friend, a man who just happens to have advertising needs of his own.
A few months later, they all meet up again at the annual Country Club Christmas party, where Darrin meets the new client’s brother, who is also looking to do some advertising.
Everyone’s advertising needs are met and Darrin moves up the company ladder.
The advertising executive, Darrin, is always bringing clients home for dinner, or golfing or having drinks with the boss at the country club. That’s social networking.
See, Darrin makes a good impression on the boss. The boss asks him to entertain a client at dinner.
The client asks Darrin to go golfing and introduces Darrin to his best friend, a man who just happens to have advertising needs of his own.
A few months later, they all meet up again at the annual Country Club Christmas party, where Darrin meets the new client’s brother, who is also looking to do some advertising.
Everyone’s advertising needs are met and Darrin moves up the company ladder.
All of this merry-making is social networking. People get together at functions, meet new people, and new social or professional alliances are formed. Social networking on the web works in a similar way. People connect with friends and make connections to new friends through existing ones. Each connection provides an opportunity to create a relationship that satisfies a need. And, unlike during the dinner parties of the past, interactions with friends and FOFs (friend of a friend) can be measured and carefully constructed, yet done in your underwear.
Facebook Magic
While Darrin networked at the country club and Samantha networked at the witch’s council, mortals were creating Facebook for the rest of us. The most popular social networking site right now has to be Facebook. Facebook is free and easy to use. Users create an account with an email and a password, and then are free to search for and add friends. Facebook also allows users to communicate through private messages or public messages posted to a friend’s wall, create event invitations, play games, take quizzes or create groups or pages focused on a topic or product. Most people seem to use Facebook for social purposes, however, increasingly some have started to use it to promote commercial interests or to bring awareness to causes. Facebook may have potential educational applications as well, but more on that later.
Doug Johnson, the blogger behind Blue Skunk Blog, states that he always thought that Facebook’s, “value on the surface seems recreational in nature,” and I have to agree. It took me awhile to see the value of using Facebook in my life. Many of my friends were already on Facebook and bugging me to join before I gave it a shot. It wasn’t long before I was adding friends. Facebook’s ability to allow me to catch up with old acquaintances was even better than going to my high school reunion! After the initial blush of interest wore off, I found that my visits to Facebook were fewer and further between. I do find Facebook useful for emailing family, friends and co-workers, as all the profiles are in one place and I don’t need to worry about email addresses. If a message isn’t urgent, I have a general rule: text if it’s during a decent hour of the day, send a message through Facebook if it isn’t. Facebook is also useful for planning events and responding to event invitations. I have also noticed that some of my friends are using Facebook to promote their businesses and recruit clients. My elder son uses Facebook to share photos of family trips and to play games, while my younger son is still in the “Facewho?” stage. My Dad created a Facebook site because he wanted to share a video of himself zip lining through Whistler, and Facebook allowed him to share it with the maximum amount of people in as user friendly a platform as possible. Now that he has an account, he uses it to play games and communicate with relatives.
As Facebook is a relatively new (over the last 6 years) social networking medium, there seems to be some debate about what constitutes generally acceptable rules for behavior while online. One video states the following rules:
- don’t change your relationship status without consulting the other person
- don’t post embarrassing photos
- be discreet when posting messages on another person’s wall
- don’t start hate groups
(Yourtango, 2009).
While I am unlikely to be changing my relationship status soon nor do I see starting any sort of hate group in my future, I identify with the other two. I actually have never seen the point of contacting anyone through their wall other than to post happy birthday. I figure that most conversations are private, and, even if they aren’t, why bore people with details they have no need of? That said, I have seen all manner of things posted to the walls of others and I wonder if there is ever any fall out for those I know personally. As for embarrassing pictures, I have my fair share, but they are all the “America
How can I create magic?
There seems to be much debate about the usefulness of Facebook as an educational tool. Some say that Facebook, like other social networking sites, has the potential to provide homework help or promote academic discussions by linking students with other students or experts. In a study conducted through Harvard, researchers found that high school students were using social networking sites to get help from others. One participant in the study stated, “If I am stuck on a project, I might send a chat message to a friend, and he might provide an answer or say, 'Take a deep breath; you can do this,'" (Blanding, 2009 ). In addition to providing support, the study found that students were using these sites to follow independent paths of study and explore creative interests, such as writing. When asked how social networking helped them, students identified that, “technical skills (65 percent), followed by creativity (61 percent), appreciation for diversity (46 percent), and communication skills (43 percent) (Blanding, 2009)” were being learned through this medium.
It’s difficult to argue that providing students with a network of peers and adults who can help them in their academic pursuits is a bad thing. Further, the access to help social networking provides, coupled with the potential for collaborative educational endeavors makes social networking even more appealing.
But what, exactly, would using Facebook in my classroom look like? First of all, my students are too young to create their own accounts legally, so all access would have to be through my account. This is just not a viable option. If my students were old enough to create their own accounts, however, there are a few things I can think of for them to do.
First, creating or joining a group could be useful. There are a number of groups on Facebook, and so many of them support a worthwhile cause or charity.
Tori’s law is a petition to better the Amber Alert process, something that students could discuss and possibly support. The Princess Project, provides help for those girls who are graduating but can’t afford the dress or pampering that goes along with the grad process. This is a great project to discuss in the senior high school grades, as some students may be all for it, while others may feel that these girls should get jobs to pay for dresses or may have general objections to the inflated prom process itself.Creating a group could be an empowering experience for students. Students could pick a charity or a school-wide goal and recruit classmates and others to join. Imagine creating the group “School X contributes to the food bank.” The group could send a message sent out to others to take all recycling to the local recycling depot, but, instead of getting money back, as them to add it to the School X account. At the end of the year, the student administrators for the group could cash out the account and donate the money to the food bank. Think of how powerful that would be, especially if the general population joined in. Or, it you just want your students to have access, you can create a secret group. I’ve included a picture of a group invitation from a high school friend of mine. She is a personal trainer and uses Facebook to recruit clients. Look closely under the group invitation. The line reads “this is a secret group. It will not show up in your profile.” This refers to the ability to create a group and only allowing those you invite to join.
Another option is to create a page. To do this, go to www.facebook.com/pages/create/php.
You’ll be given the option to create a community page (probably the more useful) or an official page, which is better for fan clubs, businesses or promotions. When creating the page, you can customize it with pictures and information and it will be attached to your profile.
2010-11-11_1205
As a test, I created a page calledReading
You’ll be given the option to create a community page (probably the more useful) or an official page, which is better for fan clubs, businesses or promotions. When creating the page, you can customize it with pictures and information and it will be attached to your profile.
2010-11-11_1205
As a test, I created a page called
Perhaps the most important educational use for Facebook in the classroom is the ability to search out significant individuals or groups and check out their Facebook presence. Who are significant individuals or groups? That depends. Studying Space in Science? Check out:
Reading the book Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (as my class is)?
Studying government, and would like to learn more about the Prime Minister:
Or maybe I’d like to show my political preferences:
There’s a lot of information on Facebook, with links to Wikipedia and blogs to boot. Older children undoubtedly are already looking here for information, so harnessing it for use in the classroom just makes sense.
To cast a spell or not cast a spell? That is the question.
Everyone knew that the best way for Samantha to get things done was to twitch her nose and cast a spell, yet she tried to live life without the magic crutch. Denial was a virtue. Should the same be said of Facebook in the classroom? There are some concerns about using Facebook at school. Some educators have “fears of exposing students to inappropriate online content (or of) students making inadvertent contact with sexual predators” (Brady, 2010). Others are concerned that bullying will happen as a result of Facebook time. One New Jersey
And these friends don’t always exercise the best judgment, nor do they necessarily have a student’s best interest at heart. This creates a problem for students. A bullying incident that could be nipped in the bud at school, for example, or a night of thoughtlessness could become viral through Facebook, ruining a student’s reputation for years to come. Do we really want the unfortunate exploits of young people to haunt them for the rest of their lives?
Yet this seems to be the very reason that some choose to included Facebook in the curriculum. Richardson
I mean really, if you’re on the board of ed, sitting in the superintendent’s chair, serving as principal, or even “just” a parent, how can the following reality not cause you to call a meeting and get Facebook into the curriculum: Upwards of 75% of the kids in your high school use Facebook. You need a manual to figure out how to appropriately set your privacy settings on Facebook .Because of that (to some extent, at least), lots of your kids are doing not so great things in public that might get them into trouble…Most of the younger kids in your system are going to be on Facebook when they are in your high school. No one is teaching them .Over and over again, I find that people’s mental model of who can see what doesn’t match up with reality. People think “everyone” includes everyone who searches for them on Facebook. They never imagine that “everyone” includes every third party sucking up data for goddess only knows what purpose. They think that if they lock down everything in the settings that they see, that they’re completely locked down. They don’t get that their friends lists, interests, likes, primary photo, affiliations, and other content is publicly accessible.
(Richardson, 2010).
High school teacher Mike Slowinski concurs. He challenges educators to think about their obligation to students through posing the question "If our students are in a world where potential employers and colleges check these (Facebook) sites… wouldn't we want to teach (students) how to use social networks safely and responsibly?" (Curwood, 2010). In addition, he states that, “Even though students may be digital natives, we can’t expect them to understand what online academic work entails in terms of formality and content" (Curwood, 2010) without some sort of formal training. Even the American Library Association (ALA) is acknowledging the need for better teaching in terms of protecting one’s privacy. Rather than banning social networking or sticking their heads in the sand to avoid the issue, the ALA held Privacy Week from May 2-8, 2010 (Adams , 2010).
With an eye to preserving my own privacy, I took a good look at my privacy settings and changed a few things. While I didn’t “need a manual,” I admit that I did need patience and time, despite the assurance from Mark Zuckerburg that Facebook staff had recently reviewed and simplified the setting of privacy controls. Even at that, I gave up clearing all the apps that I no longer used, as I have about 25 and I needed to delete them one at a time. I considered getting rid of apps all together, but that would have blocked Slideshare, which is one particularly useful educational tool. I did make sure to double check who has access to my posts as, “at a minimum, educators should have all privacy settings set to “only friends”. “Friends of friends” and “Networks and Friends” open your content to a large group of unknown people. Your privacy and that of your family may be a risk. People you do not know may be looking at you, your home, your kids, your grandkids, - your lives!” seemed like sound advice (Johnson, 2009).
So it seems that, along with the general internet safety lessons that we are to teach students, there needs to be a place for Facebook, or for that matter, all social networking safety. Many advocate for the creation of specific guidelines for social networking at the school or even district level. Some considerations for these guidelines are:
- Do not use commentary deemed to be defamatory, obscene, proprietary, or libelous.
- Exercise caution with regards to exaggeration, colorful language, guesswork, obscenity, copyrighted materials, legal conclusions, and derogatory remarks or characterizations.
- Post only what you want the world to see.
- Do not discuss students or coworkers or publicly criticize school policies or personnel.
- Do not post images that include students.
- Do not accept students as friends… Decline any student-initiated friend requests.
- Do not initiate friendships with students
(Johnson, 2009).
Do witches and men mix?
Samantha’s mother didn’t seem to think so. Endora’s derisive attitude towards her son-in-law mirrors that of those who feel that teachers shouldn’t use Facebook at all. Indeed, some teachers are bound by district policy that prohibits its use. Johnson states:
As educators we have a professional image to uphold and how we conduct ourselves online helps determine this image. As reported by the media, there have been instances of educators demonstrating professional misconduct while engaging in inappropriate dialogue about their schools and/or students or posting pictures and videos of themselves engaged in inappropriate activity. Some educators feel that being online shields them from having their personal lives examined. But increasingly… educators’ online identities are too often public and can cause serious repercussions.
(Johnson, 2009)
Personally, I think this is a slippery slope. While I agree that educators have a ‘professional image to uphold,’ that image is dynamic and reflects the times. What is the professional image I am to reflect? 100 years ago, I’m fairly sure it would have been that of an unmarried, devoutly religious, caucasion woman from a ‘good’ family. Does that reflect the norms of this day and age? Besides, there are a number of mediums through which teachers, or others, could disgrace themselves. Perhaps, if we were all subject to carefully crafted social networking guidelines when we were teens ourselves, then the ‘serious repercussions’ mentioned above could be avoided. A more persuasive argument, in my opinion, is that, “we (teachers and parents) have a responsibility to understand what Facebook is all about,” (Richardson
Looking back at the suggestions for Facebook policy, you’ll see that friending students is not advised. This leads to another hotly debated controversy with regards to Facebook and education. Frankly, I was surprised that such a controversy exists. Being an elementary teacher, it has never been an issue for me. The extreme age difference between myself and my students dictates a quite formal relationship, although I suspect it might be the same if I taught high school, as that is just my personality. I listen to my students, I advise my students and I’d like to think I teach my students a thing or two, but I am not what I would call chummy. It is the same with parents. I am friendly, but not a friend. Consequently, only one student has ever tried to friend me, and he wasn’t even my student. He was a co-worker’s student and Facebook friend and I believe he just sent out friend requests to everyone on her friends list.
Personal feelings aside, after considering the weight of evidence, I feel that teacher’s should continue to exercise autonomy when deciding to friend or not friend students, as, again, I believe that professional autonomy is a right worth preserving. Many school districts, however, are drafting policies and, “depending on how the policy is written, it may-intentionally or otherwise-prohibit friending students on social networks.” I suppose that each teacher must first familiarize him or herself with the district’s policy, then think carefully about any possible repercussions.
A place of their own
Sam and Darren found their little haven: a house outside the city, fit for visiting bosses and clients and the occasional relative that zapped in for a visit. What about us? For those who feel that Facebook has no place in their lives or classrooms, there are other social networking sites out there. Before turning our attention to them, it’s worth defending social networking in an educational setting in general.
As previously stated, students who first started social networking to connect with friends quickly found that this was a platform through which they could learn and express themselves creatively. Students could exchange information on topics of interest with peers, professionals and experts. Poems and stories previously relegated to the diary hidden at the bottom of the sock drawer suddenly were shared with a public audience. Questions didn’t have to wait for Monday, as they could be posted and responded to, and not even necessarily by the teacher.
There are other reasons to address social networking in the classroom. According to author and influential business thinker Gary Hamel,
The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web…
(Hamel, 2009)
What is this new social environment and what will it mean for the work place? Hamel lists 12 important distinctions between traditional work environments and the new environment on the horizon.
1. All ideas compete on an equal footing. On the Web, every idea has the chance to gain a following.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.
(Hamel, 2009).
Think about what this new social atmosphere means for the classroom. For students to become ready for the new business world, and for classrooms to make them ready, there needs to be a shift. Teachers can’t train students to blindly follow authority, completing the real work of designing tasks and creating groups and leaving students to move through the paces. We need to design dynamic spaces for students to learn. Students need the opportunity to put forward ideas, chose worthwhile tasks and complete them in carefully chosen groups of differentiated specialties (#1,5&6). They need to have the opportunity to be a leader and question what a leader does (#3&4). They need to be able to share and review ideas and complete tasks with a vested interest in doing an excellent job (#8,9&11). Social networking platforms can help students do this, by giving them the opportunity to express ideas, propose projects, set criteria, find and share information, form groups, divide the work, etc. And for this reason, social networking needs to make it to the classroom.
There are roughly two types of sites: those for educators and those for the general public, including students.
Teachers who don’t want to join Facebook or who would like to join a public forum for the sake of exchanging educational ideas have a few options. Each site is a closed site, in that membership must be approved before you can join and contribute. I signed up for TeacherLibrarianNing (available at http://teacherlibrarian.ning.com/) and Classroom 2.0 (available at http://www.classroom20.com/). Upon signing up, each gave a message that my membership was awaiting approval, and I needed to wait for an email confirmation. While nothing is ever completely secure, this gave me a little bit of reassurance that information shared through these sites will be professional. More importantly, I feel that actual discussions about teaching will result from these sites, as opposed to on my Facebook account, where I only ever seem to send and receive messages of a personal nature.
For the general public, including students, there’s Ning.com. Nings are sites that offer a “Facebook-like environment (through which teachers can) deliver some… curriculum and teach some social networking skills as well” (Richardson
There are a couple of issues with Ning.com. First, searching for a Ning through the search function results in hits that are either inappropriate for students or so loosely related to the topic searched as to be useless. Students and teachers need to carefully sift through what Nings a search turns up. Also, many sites require you to ask for permission to view the contents, which, while a major plus for educators, is a pain when trying to perform a cursory inspection of a site. In addition, when creating your own Ning, you have to build up its popularity. This isn’t an issue if you only want students to access the site, but if you were hoping to attract others, you may not be able to do so as fast as when connected to as heavily-visited a site as Facebook. Students under 13 cannot access sites or create their own. Finally, there seems to be a cost associated with the service, which is nominal and may be waved for educational sites.
If you can overcome these set backs, creating a Ning could be for you. If my students were older, I think creating a Ning for each major research project throughout the year would be a great way to connect students and allow them to share ideas and answer each others questions. I’m sure I have time to come up with a solution for the age problem, as it seems that social networking is here to stay.
Resources
48-49. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2002785871).
Anonymous, . Kicked Off Facebook. (2010, September). Scholastic Action, 34(2), 20-21,T5. Retrieved
November 10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2140715091).
Blanding, M. (2009). Thanks for the add. now help me with my homework. Retrieved from:
Brady, K.. (2010, February). Lifting the Limits on Social Networking Sites. School Administrator, 67(2), 8.
Retrieved November 10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1950191201).
Christopher Harris. (2010, April). Friend Me? School Library Journal, 56(4), 16. Retrieved November 10,
2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 2002800041).
Curwood, J.. (2010, March). BEYOND GOOGLE. Instructor (1999), 119(5), 49-53. Retrieved November
10, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals. (Document ID: 1998413271).
Hamel, G. (2009). The facebook generation vs. the fortune 500. retrieved from:
Johnson, D. (2009). Guidelines for educators using social networking sites. Retrieved from:
http://trailfire.com/joannedegroot/marks/916695.
Corwin.
Yourtango. (2009). Facebook manners and you. Retrieved from
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