1. I believe that, yes, all teachers in traditional classrooms should be encouraged to create online activities for students. Using online activities is a way of broadening the potential of what can be experienced within the four walls of a classroom. There is an abundance of rich opportunities online, and these should be explored in all classrooms. The advantage that traditional classroom teachers have over those who are facilitating online courses, is that we can marry the online activites with group work and discussions. I know that some may argue that discussions can take place online and- they can- but I think that nothing can take the place of a face-to-face class discussion. By including many different types of activities in the classroom, we are able to meet the needs of students with different learning styles.
2. Students should be taught how to use social networks early on. In fact, it makes me smile to write that we should "teach" them how to use social networking sites at all because I am sure most of them are using social networking sites incredibly early in life. I think it is more reasonable to say that I believe we, as teachers should guide students in the approriate use of social networking sites from early elementary school on. Then, beginning in 6th grade, I think we should begin to utilize these sites in our teaching. Using sites like Ning and Facebook worked quite well in several of the examples listed in Richardson's text. He discussed how Facebook has been successfully used in traditional classrooms and libraries. He also shared how "ning" sites were useful to create "virtual" classrooms. I think all of these examples show that social networking sites can be used and used effectively with students of all ages.
3. Teachers can use social networking sites as teaching and learning tools. I found an example listed in Richardson's text interesting. Here, he described a social studies teacher, Jim, who found ways to utilize facebook with his students. The students in the social studies class responded to discussion topics on a private group facebook page that Jim established. (Richardson, 2010). At first when I read this, I wondered if it mattered at all that Jim used Facebook. He could have used any other blog site afterall. But after thinking about it, I do think that it helped to create "buy in" from the students. By utilizing a networking site that the students already frequented, he was able to take away any trependation they might have felt about using an unfamiliar site. He also expanded their concepts of what Facebook could be. Instead of it simply being a place to share random thoughts and pictures with friends, it became a place to discuss ideas and concepts. It really made me think even more seriously about the web-sites we block and why we block them. Isn't it better to teach students how to use these sites? If they don't learn it in school, they likely aren't going to be learning it at all.
In addition to using sites like facebook as discussion boards, I also think we could use ning sites to connect our current students with past students who may have insight into the topics being taught in the classroom. As in the example given in Richardson, we should keep our alumni connected to current students so that we can share knowledge and continue to build a community or learners rather than starting from scratch each year.
4. In the future, I envision social networking to become more and more acceptable and more welcomed into classrooms. I believe that social networking sites could become a way of easily contacting experts in a variety of fields. It could also become a tool used to find people who experienced certain events in history and are willing to share their stories with others. Like blogs, I also think that social networking sites will allow students to share ideas with one another and communicate with students from different schools, in differents states, and even in different countries.
I think that social networking will evolve to provide its users a place that grows with them. Instead of moving from one site to another as students mature and grow, the site will grow and expand to accomodate the maturing needs of its users.
With all this said, though, it's hard to envision social networking becoming any more pervasive in our world than it already is. Political movements have been facilitated through Facebook, demonstrations coordinated, and news can be shared in almost real time. Maybe the real revolutionary predication about the future of social networking in our classrooms is that the sites will be unblocked and able to be accessed in our schools.
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