EDUC 630 Social Networks

The social networking site I am most familiar with is Facebook since it is the one I have joined. I check my news feed every day to see what is going on in the lives of my friends and family. I also play games with friends through that medium. I have long thought that there are some characteristics of Facebook that would lend themselves well to educational purposes: the ability to post pictures and posters, the blog-like nature of the news feed, and the ability to post videos or link to video sites such as youtube. The concerns I have would mostly be safety-related. If someone deliberately wished to stalk or prey on someone else, Facebook is not that difficult to hack. People tend to be quick to accept “friends” they don’t really know. It would also be easy to turn in work that the student had not done himself. There is no surefire way to ensure that the work was done by the student and not an older sibling or a friend. A third issue with Facebook is the distractibility factor. Not only are there all kinds of available games, there are also ads encouraging users to link to a new “nonFacebook” page. As an adult, I can ignore these, but it is more difficult for some of the younger ones.

When I heard about Edmodo, I was excited. Here is a site that uses many of the positive features of Facebook and filters out many of the negative features. There are no ads or games unless you as a teacher post them. There is a code students need to join the site and participate in the class. As long as students are protective of the code, security can be fairly well maintained. Parents can also be given a code which allows them to monitor their own child’s work (including grades) as well as any general teacher posts, but they can’t enter comments except direct posts to the teacher. Security codes can be changed to exclude students from the ability to comment. This feature can be used to teach a student about inappropriate comments – he can read but not write (except to turn in work) for a while. You still have to be on the honor system for work turned in, because from a distance a teacher can’t really tell for sure who did the work. As teachers we would have to trust the parents of our students or, if the students are college or higher, the students themselves. Of course, we do learn to recognize the quality of work each student turns in, so if it changes drastically, most teachers would notice. Edmodo can also be used to work a project with another class doing the same kind of work. The teachers can issue special codes specifically for the project so the “foreign” students only interact in the specific project. But this feature allows collaboration at a distance (even around the world) with students who may have a different culture, even a different primary language, adding an exciting new dimension to the class. An issue for a math teacher is the need for special software on all the computers to allow students to use math symbols. Most word processing software is limited in the symbols available so students would have to write out worksheets and scan them if they don’t have math software.