Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Social Networking in the classroom

Teachers can introduce social networking and educational blogging into the classroom, but will our students ever value it?
“They’re using social networking sites like crazy, but they don’t necessarily think those have a place in the classroom,” said Gail Salaway, one of the primary authors and a fellow at ECAR.

Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :: Students' 'Evolving' Use of Technology

It does give me pause. Part of me thinks it's a turf war of sorts. Some members of the milennial generation are possessive of their MySpace/Facebook territory. Once, when my students were talking about an adult's MySpace profile, some of them questioned whether adults had any place in that social network. So another part of me thinks that the thinking cited above comes from a limited view of social networking and its implications. Social networks already are proliferating in the adult world - by April 2007 there were already 10 million LinkedIn users.

In my opinion, not only to social networks have a place in today's classroom, they're soon to become commonplace.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good points, Chris. I also believe that we need to teach students about social networks and what it means to live in a society of (mostly) free information flow, and how they can be part of that network.
Yes, social networking can have its place in the classroom. I think we are still figuring out the appropriate place.
Peace,
Kevin