Critical Study

Social Networking in Education is beginning to Boom?

So is Social Networking finally catching on within secondary schools as a valid means of communication and collaboration between students? Probably not, but there is definitely many more projects that seems to be underway even if most of the writing and research is about what might happen rather than actual what is practically happening.

EdublogThe Edublog Awards has now began to include a section related to the Best Educational Use of A Social Networking Service, although of the five nominees none are actually using as a learning tool with students. I do not mean that remark to denigrate the work and the innovation of using the NING social networking tool as a way to bring teachers together to share resources but it almost seems like yet more missed opportunities.

However it is interesting to see that the Kingswear Primary School is trying to bring both teachers, students and parents together along with the fact that obviously NING is the application tool of choice due to its flexibility and ease of setup. It seems that NING has also made the decision to allow any network created within their application that is educationally based to go advert free.

But you ask, what of my recent endeavours to begin the use of social networking as a teaching and learning tool at my recent school. Well after the usual time to convince and get the filters turned off for such a website, I have found that after technical resistance follows teacher resistance. As usual a teachers’ role is often so busy that the idea of using a new fangled social networking tool that might take away from what is happening, a particular subjects coverage, is a shall we say a very adventurous one. Ideas of continuing in using a social network as a L2 support tool, seem to be disappearing although an idea has come up to support the IB Theory of Knowledge element of the course through a social network? Might be an interesting idea as the ToK element of the IB can often leave students cold, and it is all about conversation and being able to critical think their ways around particular issues? An idea anyway, to play around with.

So is social networking beginning to take route and boom within secondary schools well obviously no – and even if as said above there does seem to be significant moves towards beginning to use and discuss their use. While the educational world is still more concerned and probably rightly with the dangers of social networking it will not be able to embrace such a technology.

The first to post a Read Review Respond…

Well finally I managed to be first to do something on my M.A. course by posting the first RRR on EDUC5251. It won’t last but at least its a good start. Not looking forward to meetings at the end of the week when I would rather be realxing over a shisha and ‘awa masbout’…but such is life.

Must now post my old assignments to the repository seeing that it was my idea and Aisha was kind enough to set it up.

Have decided to look in detail at three chapters that seem to show interesting research:-

  • Allegories of Creative Destruction: Technology and Organisation in Narratives of the Economy
  • Virtual Society and the Cultural Practice of Study
  • Abstraction and Deconceptualisation: An Anthropological Comment

Heavy titles as you can see. In the meantime I am still looking at ideas for my Critical Study. The work on Web 2.0 and its actual ‘nitty gritty’ effects on learning could be an interesting one. Although there has been lots of research already. I have even maybe thought of looking at how the use of Web 2.0 technologies could improve distance learning maybe on the course I am working on, or with another group of students starting their first year? Will mull this over further. There is an interesting post here from Tony Karrer on the take up of Web 2.0 beyond the inital hype into actual use.

Wrestling with Moodle 1.6, and other joys…

Well still waiting upon my results for my second module, while everyone else seems to have got them. Awwww…. Have to now start thinking about what to do for my ‘Critical Study’, and yes I should be relaxing on holiday, but its been going through my mind. Some ideas I will have to cogitate are:-

  • Web 2.0 – Read/Write Web and its effects on education – linking to ideas if connected learning, saftey issues and whether they would be valuable learning tools in the future that are linked with some clever piece of software
  • Eportfolio use in a secondary school – Will it work, maybe setup Elgg and link to Moodle and then test out over period of time
  • Is an LMS practical with teachers who are technocentric? – International schools and poor ICT provision is an LMS a worthy addition that all subjects could use?

Well theres a few? Will have to think about those a little more. Although the idea of Elgg setup scares me as my Moodle site has just gone down although I’m looking to make the event a positive and upgrade to Moodle 1.6 in the mean times. Have begun on my eportfolio address using Joomla as a basic template which should lead to an easy repository of ideas and information. I wonder whether I can link it to my WordPress blog somehow?