Discussion of Social Networking

Social networking has changed substantially in the past several years. There is really no demographic that isn’t part of social networking online. Teenagers to people in their early thirties are the most prominent on these sites.

    I am part of several social networks. I have a Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr for personal use. I have an Edmodo and separate Pinterest for teaching. I have a personal and professional twitter that I never use. When I was young I had a myspace but I no longer keep it up. I have multiple blogs for professional use.

    Using social networking I think is extremely beneficial. The sites allow me to keep in touch with friends that live all over the country and world. Sites like Pinterest help me with ideas for cooking and crafts and teaching. In school, they allow me to show my students proper netiquette so when they are older and have their own sites they know about privacy settings and digital citizenship.

    I have not had very many negative experiences using social networking. The sites can be kind of a waste of time. But as long as you are smart about what you put online and keep your privacy settings up to date there is really nothing to worry about.

I have never used social networking with my kids. My students are only eight and nine years old so I always assumed I would never use social networking with them. However, lately I’ve been hearing about lots of different integration ideas for students as young as kinders.

    I went to the Technology in Education conference and saw a presentation from one school where they have one to one laptops and they use google hang outs and google chats and docs. (I don’t know if google counts, but used in that way I think it does.)

    I also saw a presentation about using individual student blogs to create audience and purpose for their writing. Kids post their writing and then people and students from all over the world can see it and comment on it. The students also go out and look for other student writing to comment on. It makes the writing meaningful. I will put together a blog for student writing next year. My kids don’t type their writing projects (for a lack of devices available to us at school) so I will scan their handwritten pieces and post them on a class writing blog.

    Another presenter spoke of Edmodo, which I will absolutely use this coming fall as homework for my students. I can post an article online and the kids have to go on and read it and answer questions or write a summary. They can also talk to each other if they are stuck on homework.