Social media find place in classroom
July 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
Among educators, Eric Sheninger is something of a social networking hero.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
Principal Eric Sheninger encourages new media at his school.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY Principal Eric Sheninger encourages new media at his school.
The principal of New Milford (N.J.) High School has nearly 12,300 Twitter followers (his handle: @NMHS_Principal). He and his teachers use Facebook to communicate with students and parents, and students use it to plan events. In class, teachers routinely ask kids to power up their cellphones to respond to classroom polls and quizzes. Rather than ban cellphones, Sheninger calls them “mobile learning devices.”
He replaced the school’s “static, boring” website with what has become a heavily used Facebook page, and his teachers encourage students to research, write, edit, perform and publish their work online.
Sheninger is one of a growing number of educators who don’t just tolerate social networking in school — he encourages it, often for educational purposes. He says sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — long banned and roundly derided by many peers — actually push kids to do better work and pay attention to important issues such as audience, quality research and copyright laws.
“The Internet as we know it is the 21st century,” he says. “It is what these students have known their whole lives. They’re connected, they’re creating, they’re discussing, they’re collaborating.”
He and others say working online also pushes education beyond the confines of school, allowing kids to broaden discussion of their work. And it forces them to do “authentic” work that gets tested out in the real world, as outside viewers see it and respond to it.
Challenging a new generation
“Being literate in 2011 means being digitally literate,” says Chris Lehmann, principal of Science Leadership Academy, a public high school in Philadelphia that has been using social media since it opened in 2006.
Sheninger and others also say it is naïve to think that kids raised online will respond to school the same way as previous generations. “Kids are coming to us bored, disconnected, and it’s a challenge for us to figure out how to leverage the tools inherent in the real-time Web,” he says.
The American Library Association encourages schools and libraries to think twice before keeping kids off social media, saying such prohibition “does not teach safe behavior and leaves youth without the necessary knowledge and skills to protect their privacy or engage in responsible speech.” Their policy statement on the topic says that instead of restricting access, librarians and teachers “should educate minors to participate responsibly, ethically and safely.”
Federal regulations have long kept most popular social networking sites off-limits, since school districts that receive federal E-rate funds to wire schools to the Internet must block material that’s obscene or “harmful to minors.” But as more educators discover the virtues of social networking sites, they’re using a variety of approaches to get around the rules: Often they ask kids to access the sites at home or on mobile devices; sometimes they tweak in-school Internet filters to allow blocked sites that they find appropriate (the regulations allow schools to make this call). Still others simply look the other way when kids inevitably find a way around the filters.
Karen Cator, the U.S. Department of Education’s director of educational technology, says it’s important to find a good middle ground.
“The Internet is not going away,” she says. “We need to do everything we can to make it safe and really a wonderful place for children.”
Providing structure, guidance
Perhaps the biggest objection to widespread use of social sites is the likelihood that kids will encounter irrelevant or even offensive material — a fear that many teachers say is overblown. While the Web can seem like “a sea of pornography and idiots,” says James Lerman, the author of several books on educational technology, schools must help students figure out how to navigate it so they “can get to the good stuff” that’s applicable to school.
“We as educators need to do a better job of advertising and sharing the meaningful work done with social media,” says Matt Levinson of Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, Calif. He writes about the struggles schools face using social media in his 2010 book, From Fear to Facebook. “If you keep it out, kids are creating their own cultures in this space with no guidance from adults — and that’s not responsible.”
The other big misconception: that schools with open Web access are simply letting kids “play freely as if there’s no structure,” says Lisa Highfill, a 5th-grade teacher in Pleasanton, Calif. A longtime devotee of YouTube — she used it recently to show her Oakland-area students videos of tornadoes and mudslides — Highfill says she chooses videos in advance.
“I don’t just search in front of the kids,” says Highfill, who also uses a YouTube add-on that strips “related videos” off the right-hand side of the page.
She admits that even with careful planning, learning online carries risks. But the risks shouldn’t be overstated. “When we go on a field trip, when we go anywhere,” she says, “we warn (students) of the dangers of where we’re going.”
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What was Google thinking!?
July 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
When I first read Violet Blue’s account of Google kicking some Google+ users out of their new social network, my first reaction was “What the he… heck Google! After due consideration, I’m no longer surprised though. In fact, I can see Google’s point.
First, Google said from the start that while “Google services … support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified” when it comes to Google+, Google “requires you to use the name that you commonly go by in daily life.”
More specifically, Google states “To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.”
It appears a good number of people have been hammered for not using their ‘real’ names. This isn’t new. Back on July 8th, Google zapped the account of “Opensource Obscure,” the Second Life nom-de-plume of an Italian user. That said, Google appears to be willing to let you back in if you can prove your identity.
In addition, Google may zap your account if you it for “couples or groups of people. Additionally, you can’t create a profile for a non-person entity such as a pet or business.” But then again, they might not. In the very next line, Google states, “Google may continue to allow existing profiles that don’t meet these criteria, as long as the profile names are unchanged.”
Of course, “Pretending to be someone else could cause your profile to be deleted.” So forget about impersonating someone else on Google+. Your account can also be blown away for spam, gambling, sexually explicit material, bullying behavior and so on. Last, but far from least, you can’t have multiple Google+ identities.
You know what? For the most part this all makes sense to me. While anonymity can be vital for some individuals all too often it’s used to simply hide mean-spirited trolls that make so many online communities utterly distasteful.
Besides, when push comes to shove, Google Plus is Google’s system. They set up their rules, some people broke them, and now they’re out. That’s life. If you don’t like it, set up your own online community.
OK, so I can see where Google is coming from, but that’s not the end of the story by a long shot. I think Google has badly mishandled this.
For starters, I don’t think people should be required to use their real names. Yes, I get how poisonous anonymous users can be to a social network. There’s a middle way though.
As Anil Dash writes in his essay on how social Websites can go badly wrong, anonymous users are a bad idea, but “Your site should have accountable identities. No, people don’t have to use their real names, or log in with Google or Facebook or Twitter unless you want them to. But truly anonymous commenting often makes it really easy to have a pile of sxxx on your website, especially if you don’t have dedicated community moderators. When do newspapers publish anonymous sources? When the journalists know the actual identity and credibility of the person, and decide it is a public good to protect their identity. You may wish to follow the same principles, or you can embrace one of my favorite methods of identity: Persistent pseudonyms. Let users pick a handle that is attached to all of their contributions in a consistent way where other people can see what they’ve done on the site. Don’t make reputation a number or a score, make it an actual representation of the person’s behavior.”
For example, when Pamela “PJ” Jones set up Groklaw, the intellectual property law news and analysis site, she kept her real life identity separate from the Web site. Despite numerous attempts to invade her privacy, no one with any sense doubted that PJ was a real person and that she stood behind her analysis and opinions.
So, if someone really wants to be “Linux Guru,” on Google+ fine. Let them. Just make sure they know that their Google Profile e-mail will be tied forevermore to “Linux Guru” on Google+.
Next, as ex-Google employee Kirrily “Skud” Robert, who had the “pleasure” of being knocked off the Google+ service, Google is turning off these accounts without letting people know why they’re being switched off. Worse still, “Honestly, if Google’s support people tell me that’s what I need to do [to get my Google+ account], I will do so.”
Google, as far as I can tell, hasn’t issued any kind of statement on what’s going on with this wave of account deletions or what steps someone should take to get their account back on. Instead, it seems to be handling in an off-hand, make-it-up as we go along way.
That’s not good enough. If Google wants Google Plus to be taken seriously, they need to do more than just state policies in Web documents. They need to set up a real user management system. As Robert concluded, “It would be nice if Google would provide the same sort of understanding toward us, by erring on the side of caution when wielding the ban-hammer, as we try and figure out how the system works based on, quite frankly, very little clear information.”
Amen!
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Can Google+ be a Facebook Killer?