Social Networking. I must say that I have been dreading this topic. I’m certainly an extrovert and love to meet people but doing so online through the medium of Facebook or MySpace is just too overwhelming and beyond my zone of comfort. I am so relieved that my Web 2.0 course instructor offered the adverse types like me an option so that we can experience social networking in “our own little space”. Dipping our toes into the water, and taking that risk.
Concerns and Advice. Perhaps my aversion comes from the fact that I’ve read a few negative articles in newspapers and magazines about the dangers of social networking. Several young teachers in a nearby district had their personal sites accessed and shared with students – an event which landed them in major hot water. Our District, after several events of cyberbullying, has chosen to block Facebook. In a way, this was a relief to me as students in the library for study blocks would often not study at all but spend the majority of their time accessing and developing their sites or sharing things with fellow students, until the noise level became disruptive. Teacher librarians hate to play the heavies and go around saying “No Facebook” and enforcing the administration’s policies regarding computer use so this took the onus off me and put it on the shoulders of the District. Of course after this summer’s Intellectual Freedom course, I was torn because I understood from my coursework that limiting access was really not the solution. Instead, teacher librarians should be helping students to become more aware of ways to use social networking sites responsibly and safely.
Doug Johnson, in his Blue Skunk blog talks about Social networking and needing to give a talk to administrators about social networking. Good for these principals for being open-minded enough to seek counsel from someone with Doug’s knowledge before making a knee-jerk decision. Doug mentions that students spend a lot of time with technology that they don’t really understand. “They use Facebook because it’s the thing to do, just like they used MySpace because it used to be the thing to do. Do we really need to teach them the correct or useful way to use social networking sites, or do we give them a better understanding of the positives and negatives of this type of service?” I would answer that we should openly 'address the elephant in the room' and talk about the social networking sites when opportunities arise as these are an important part of our students’ identities and they need to understand how to make wise decisions in their use.
Doug Johnson also wrote an article for Education World called Seven Things All Adults Should Know About MySpace. New thoughts I took away from this article:
1. Social networking is enormously popular with young adults. Over 60% of students are social content users – that’s huge – it’s obviously an important part of their lives.
2. Friends are probably just that. That teens seldom turn down friend requests in the interest of inclusiveness, thus the large # of friendships.
3. Blocking sites at school won't keep kids away from MySpace. When students are forced to work around proxy servers, etc. they come to regard school as irrelevant to their lives.
4. Some degree of danger does exist for MySpace users. Need for caution about personal information as predators do use these sites.
5. Young people need to understand that material posted on the Internet is public and might have unintended implications. I loved the comment on a poster from this site: A poster (Good Signs) produced by Minnesota State University, Mankato, asks students "Who might see your online profile?" and goes on to list: Your friends, Random students, Professors, Employers, Your coach, Campus Security, Law enforcement, Sex offenders, Residential Life Staff, University Judicial Board, Parents, and Grandma.
6. Teachers might want to check to see if they have had a MySpace account created for them. Good tip – I did. Fortunately, I don’t have a site. Do you?
7. MySpace and social networking have value. Discusses making and trying on an identity. “They are about all the same things that have existed for hundreds of years, hidden in notebooks and scribbled on bathroom walls and whispered over telephones. The content of MySpace.com bears discussion, not obstruction.”
Facebook. However, I did “check out” Facebook so I had a better understanding of what it looked like and how it operated. My daughter Andrea gave me an hour-long tour through her well-developed site and I can now appreciate why she spends so much time on Facebook and has embraced it as an important component of her social life. She has posted photos in folders from various trips to share, has established a profile which is interesting but doesn’t provide personal information, and she has quite a list of friends who have varying degrees of access on both a wide or individual scale, and, as she says, “Facebook is a way of keeping in touch with people that I might not otherwise have kept in touch with”. Recently my daughter received a position at Whistler and has been hunting for a place to stay. She tried every avenue available: property managers, newspaper and online classified ads, Chamber of Commerce, calling friends, etc. When she changed her Facebook message to a plea for help finding accommodations in Whistler, the responses immediately started rolling in with her Facebook friends rallying around to offer leads and suggestions. Another useful feature of Facebook.
Library Social Networks. Now for my first personal venture into Social Networking, I signed up for Library 20 Ning. I filled out my profile, pasted in a photo and became Member 3508 of Library 2.0. I gave the Ning a good going over:
Checked out my Page. Wow! Looks good. Nice glasses.
Snooped through the site.
Told to post an introduction so I did. Here’s mine...
“Hello, Everyone, My name is Joanie Proske and I am the Teacher Librarian at a ridiculously large Gr. 8 to 12 High School in Langley, B.C. Well, actually, I am on education leave from my position to work on my Masters in Teacher Librarianship through the University of Alberta. I'm doing my coursework by Distance Education, which has really tested my computer skills, but it's all good! One of my courses is about Web 2.0 Technology and I am stunned by how much I have learned in the last two months and humbled by how much more I need to learn. I'm looking forward to joining this social network and continuing to learn about Web 2.0 from a community of like-minded individuals.”
I checked through the profiles to see who were members. I found a Professor Emeritus from U of New York, a MLS who works independently as a consultant to Health care industry as a researcher, student librarians, and a librarian of a small rural library. I typed in every librarian “whose who” name I knew but no one seemed to be a member. Hmmmm. Wonder why?
Where did the listed members come from? I was astounded to see the locations that really reflected the reach of this social community: South Africa, Belgium, US, India, United Kingdom, Canada, Nigeria, Australia, Slovakia, Portugal, Palestine, Costa Rica, New Zealand…
I moved on to check out the blogs by reading the first paragraph and then continuing on if interested…
Checked out groups and found 4 pages of forums and groups such as European librarians, business librarians, Medical and Health Science libraries, Distance/Off-Campus Library Services, New Librarians, Elementary Librarians, Public Librarians, Dewey VS LC, Teen Services, Archivists, School Libraries (looked at this one). There were some crazy ones too: Silly Librarians against Dull Dewey LADD, Creative Librarians, Librarian by Day Bad Karaoke by Night, Vegan Vegetarian Librarians.
I looked at a sample question asked about school library websites. The responses were indeed a treasure trove of ideas on good sites, recommended website providers, things to include, the need to add a visitor counter to the website, etc.
Read a question about noise level and posted a comment back– my first foray into being a contributing member!
Used the search bar to check for different topics no luck – tried Webcomics – VoiceThreads – Wikis – Wikipedia and then began to wonder if this was the best forum. After a week as a member I haven’t seen any real action on this site – no friend invites – no responses to questions – I decided to see if something better existed. If you’re going to be a member of a social network then there has to be some communication back and forth to create the “social” component!
TeacherLibrarianNing. In frustration, I emailed my IT guru Lesley Edwards in North Vancouver asking for her advice on a better social networking site and then waited for her response. Lesley suggested joining the TeacherLibrarianNing set up by Joyce Valenza at which I did and I am now member #2198 (see image above).
It was ridiculously easy to join this social forum, and a lot of fun. I spent a entire morning going through the site reading the different forum comments and even answering a couple: one from a new employee who needed ideas to decorate a book display, another from a teacher librarian wondering how to sort through donated books. I read through other questions that led me to new practical ideas, such as this one about collection development: “Put out a survey to your teachers and ask about how they have used the collection in the past and having them suggest which areas they would like to see more materials. Zoomerang.com has free surveys that you can create. Then email the link to your staff.”
And then there was the response to the question of what would you tell a new teacher librarian about collection development in one sentence. My favourite response was, "It's not YOUR collection; it's your STUDENT'S collection." This site was certainly much more lively than the other ning.
I bravely posted a forum question “Which is your favourite Web 2.0 Add-on which you would recommend Teacher Librarians add to their computer?” to see what responses I might get before our next discussion. A neat feature is that you can set up the site for responses to be emailed to you and then close them down when you no longer wish to follow the thread.
Looked through the 2 pages of groups for TeacherLibrarianNing and decided to join the High School TeacherLibrarian group with 232 members. Posted my intro and read about Twilight fan parties, public/school partnerships and wiki subject headings. I started to get lots of invites and little welcomes and comments and friend invites. Wow! Things are happening! I like the way that invites come to my email so you don’t have to check constantly yourself. I already had five friends by the end of day one! That’s it – I’m giving up on the other social networking site.
As for my question about favourite add-ons I’ve already got seven responses:
“On my Mac I have buttons for adding an RSS feed, and bookmarking using delicious and/or diigo, and Awesome Highlighter. Love Firefox!”
“I love Freescreencast.com (http://www.freescreencast.com) and Glogster (http://www.glogster.com). I'm also using Smilebox (http://www.smilebox.com) quite a bit. I'm in love with so many Web 2.0 applications! You might want to take a look at my new wiki http://www.ladigitalimmigrants.wikispaces.com.” can't live without my del.icio.us and Google Reader RSS feeds.
“ I can't live without my del.icio.us and Google Reader RSS feeds.”
Nings. In the TeacherLibrarianNing site, I noticed that Joyce Valenza suggests that others start their own ning. I hadn’t heard of the term nings until I looked into these two library social networking sites so I checked out Wikipedia which defines a ning as “an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks.” In our course Trailfire the NCTE Inbox blog entry “Social networking: the Ning’s the Thing article” asks us to examine our own social networks and to recognize that nings are the online equivalent to these. (Other than my teaching connections, my running group would be my biggest social network or my face-to-face ning.)
Educational Uses. How can a teacher use a Ning social network? The NCTE article listed some great ideas which I think would be great ways to incorporate Nings into the school environment:
* Set up discussion forums based on literature circles, peer writing groups, different class periods, and so forth.
* Create groups based on student interests—book clubs, favorite genres, other content areas.
* Upload alternative book reports created as podcasts, videos, or photos.
* Ask students to write their reading logs or journals online, using their own personal blogs.
* Post information for students and their families in a shared space.
The advantages I can see of using a Ning over something like Facebook or MySpace is that as administrator you have control of removing any inappropriate or off-topic discussions but yet the group can establish their own forums and discussions and exercise creative scope. In one blog entry I read about about nings are being blocked in various school districts and a reader responded by suggesting using a Moodle which gives the teacher full control “over content, posts, and membership.” It is interesting that whatever new form of Web 2.0 technology is introduced in schools, examples of inappropriate usage seem to govern its removal from the toolkit of applications available for students to use. More reason for teachers to become more knowledgeable about Web 2.0 so they can introduce the correct ways to use technology and demonstrate ways it can be used to enhance and enrich the curriculum.
Final Thoughts. As for me, well I'm hooked on TeacherLibrarianNing and am checking it daily to learn more about my profession and to scaffold on the shared knowledge of my peers. I've taken the plunge into Social Networking...well I'm at least in the water up to my knees!
