Persuasive Video Project Using Facebook

Inspired by Stanford Professor BJ Fogg's work in the area of Persuasive Technology with our school throughout the year, our 8th grade film teacher just kicked off what I think is a best practice kinda project. I don't have any student work samples to share here because they were all posted to their personal facebook accounts, but I will see if a group will cross post their work to YouTube so that I'm able to show an artifact. I had a very limited role in helping the teacher prepare this lesson and I only observed the students presenting in class today, but I will do my best to share what I know.

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Introduction:

Our 8th grade (ages 13-14) film students were introduced to the down and dirty process of innovation that is often used here in the silicon valley. They were essentially introduced to the concept of "launching quickly, gathering feedback, measuring impact, and then iterating." Students were tasked to focus on one of the "antecedents to peace" and to create a video that would persuade people to act in a way that positively impacted one of these antecedents. Students were then challenged to figure out VERY SIMPLE ways to measure changes in behavior when posting their videos at facebook.

Process: 

Students were given a VERY limited amount of time (two class periods that were roughly 50 minutes in length) to choose an antecedent, determine how they would measure impact, and produce and post a video to facebook. The videos encouraged viewers to do something and then respond back with a comment or like. Students worked in teams of 2-3 (it is important to note that NOT all students have a facebook page. This was OK, because these students were just simply paired up with a student who had an account). All videos were posted so that they were only visible to their friends. Students engaged in this process and then shared their work and results in class today.

Results and an Example: 

In class each one of the groups shared their video and the comments/likes by actually showing their Facebook pages on the projector. This was cool. One group created a 30 second video overview of the popular website, "Freerice," and challenged viewers to go to Freerice and answer questions to help combat world hunger. To measure change in behavior and impact of their video, the students asked that their peers report back with a like and/or a comment if they actually played Freerice. This group shared that their video received well over 40 likes along with a few comments. They even showed us how one person re-posted and shared the video on her wall-so cool! Other projects were equally compelling-one group created a video showing others engaging in random acts of kindness and then challenged viewers to do a random act of kindness on their own and report back on the video with a like. 

Summary:

I'm proud of this teacher and her class for taking this risk. To my knowledge, something like this has NEVER been attempted before with a group of Middle School students. We are overly bombarded with messages of the negatives associated with youth and social networks and I'm pleased to see this best practice example firsthand.

Here is what could've happened but didn't: 

• others could've left mean and derogatory comments-didn't happen
• others could've said something embarrassing in the comments-didn't happen
• someone could've said a swear word in the comments-didn't happen

What happened with this class proves that Facebook and other popular social network platforms CAN be used in ways that are both meaningful and thoughtful with students (not that what they do for purely social purposes isn't meaningful and thoughtful as well). These students engaged in real, authentic social science as they created these videos and collected feedback at Facebook. I'm hopeful that we'll continue to see innovative and creative uses of spaces like Facebook in our classrooms in the future. 

Counterpoint Monthy Article on Twitter

The students at my school recently asked me to write an article on the difference between twitter and facebook for their monthly publication known as "Counterpoint Monthly." They are still working solely in the print world, so I'm reposting here so students and anyone else may leave comments.

Quiz - what do Iranian citizen journalists and famous people like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Taffee and Paris Hilton all have in common? Answer - they all use Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networks on the Internet. I was asked by the CP Monthly Team to write an article on the differences between two of the most popular social networks right now, Twitter and Facebook. This is an often discussed topic in the blogosphere with a host of well written blog posts that address the main similarities and differences. Danah Boyd, who is a social media researcher for Microsoft, recently wrote a stellar post over at her blog that addresses this question. You may access Dr. Boyd's piece at http://bit.ly/1185Pd. Given Boyd's excellent article and the fact that many of you are already avid Facebook users, I thought I would focus my 600 words on Twitter. I certainly don't intend for this to be a sales pitch on why you should use Twitter because it isn't without fault and it isn't for everyone. Instead, I'd like to simply share a few stories of how Twitter has been used by people around the world and how I use it to connect with others who share my passions and interests.

Out of the box, Twitter might seem like it is nothing more than a platform for blabbering about our mundane daily occurrences. While I've seen some of this in my experience over the past two years using Twitter, I've also witnessed some incredibly powerful stories of collaboration, sharing and creativity. For example, Southern California residents used the platform earlier this fall to share information about the Loma wildfires. Consider what happened this past June with the reporting of the protests following Iran's hotly contested election. The government of Iran effectively shut down all modern media outlets and journalists. The traditional way of reporting the news was completely closed. Iranian citizens, however, armed with Twitter, mobile phones, extraordinary willpower and creativity, Tweeted the news of their struggle.  In a show of solidarity and as a means to confuse the government, people outside of Iran turned their profile pictures to the color of the opposition party (green) and changed their location to Tehran, Iran. As the government blocked Twitter access inside of the country, people inside and outside of Iran worked together to create proxy sites that circumvented the governmental filtering. The government eventually blocked these proxies, but new ones were built and shared so that the news reporting would continue via Twitter. The US State Department even asked Twitter to delay a planned network maintenance outage so that the citizen journalists inside of Iran could continue their work without interruption. This was an incredible story of global collaboration! It is hard to believe that all of this was facilitated by a small little company from San Francisco that built a software platform around the single simple question of, "What are you doing right now?"

Who do I connect with on Twitter? I primarily use Twitter as a way to collaborate and share with other teachers around the world who are interested in the intersection of technology and learning. We share links to interesting blog posts and ideas about clever teaching ideas. The concept of the the Gator Radio Experience project here at Castilleja is the direct result of my Twitter interactions with other educators. Many of these educators know a great deal more than I about the world of live Internet webcasting and were incredibly helpful in helping us launch this project. I also follow university professors, a few authors, individuals and organizations with a green slant, and of course the University of Wisconsin - Madison's mascot, Bucky Badger!

Before creating a Twitter account or an account on any other social media platform, please talk things over with your parents. I highly recommend that you have a conversation with your parents in which you agree upon acceptable and unacceptable uses of social networks. While these tools may be used in incredibly productive and meaningful ways, they certainly can come back to create problems for us in the future. Also, please know that Twitter and all other social networking sites have a minimum age requirement in their terms of service. This minimum age tends to be 13 years old and should be respected. Finally, remember the Golden Rule as you work, share and collaborate in these powerful online communities.

If you'd like to leave comments about this story or if you'd like to see additional resources and information about Twitter, visit my professional blog at http://bit.ly/mjmontagne.

Twitter Streams of Interest:
PeaceDot Project: http://twitter.com/peacedot
Gator Radio Experience: http://twitter.com/gator_radio
Bucky Badger: http://twitter.com/buckybadger
Mr. Montagne's Twitter Stream: http://twitter.com/mjmontagne

"Facebook Top 20 Learning Applications"

Short video here on the many educational applications that can be installed and utilized within the Facebook platform. A shout out to Derek Baird for posting this in his Twitterstream.

My Facebook Policy

As the explosion of 30, 40, 50, 60, and even 70/80/90 somethings getting involved in the world of Facebook continues, we're all going to be confronted with knotty questions of whether or not is appropriate to become contacts/friends with different people. Perhaps it is a former girlfriend/boyfriend, college buddies, childhood friends, former teachers/professors, current/former students, current/former colleagues, people we don't know face to face, etc. Every phase from our lives now can be merged together in the Facebook experience. For some people, this can be an unanticipated positive outcome and for others it can be a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, in the spirit of openness and inspired by Lorna Costantini's wonderful live webcast last night on the topic of Parents and Facebook, I thought I'd spell out my professional policy regarding establishing contacts with past/current students and past/current parents. As a disclaimer, this policy works well for me but very well may not work for someone else. I believe that we all need to make our decisions with what will work best for our own particular circumstance.

For me the experience of connecting has been nothing but positive. I've reconnected with a great childhood buddy of mine who lives out here in the Bay Area, I've reconnected with cousins I haven't seen or talked to in years, I've been able to keep in touch with all of my good teaching buddies from Milwaukee, I've been able to get to know current students better, I've been better sensitized to the experiences of the busy lives of parents and their families, I've shared resources and learned new things from others, I've reconnected with scores of college and high school buddies, and I've furthered my online relationships with many people I don't even know but who are doing some innovative things in the area of teaching and learning around the world.

Here it goes...Matt Montagne's policy for connecting with past/present students and parents on Facebook (as of February 24th, 2009, that is...this is surely bound to change going forward):

I will accept a friend request from past/present students and parents under the following condition...everyone must use respectful language and keep their profile "clean." This, actually, is my rule for maintaining connections with anyone online and I post this clearly on my Facebook profile picture.

To date, I've had to discontinue the connection with only a handful of adults/students primarily due to repeated foul language in status updates.

That is it...that is my policy. I don't put people on limited profile because you can find out more information about me via a google search than you can by my facebook profile. And outside of doing my best to contribute and share with other edu-nerds around the world, I can't really control what shows up on the first page of a google search for Matt Montagne.

Best of luck developing your own personal Facebook policy for accepting/not accepting friend requests from people in your life, both past and present. These are interesting times and as a result, there is no one method and technique that will work for everyone.

Facebook Class for Parents

The main message that I give to parents regarding mentoring children in their use of internetworking/social networking tools is to, "Roll up your sleeves and use the stuff." It is really, really difficult to have effective conversations with people regarding subjects that we know nothing about.

This is the great thing about a a free class being offered over at Stanford beginning on February 19th. Parents and community members get the opportunity to learn more about Facebook by actual using the tool. Click here for more information on this excellent opportunity.

From the class website:

"Class 1 - Feb. 19: The ABC’s of Facebook: New user to fanatic

Class 2 - March 5: Ten steps to protect loved ones on Facebook

Class 3 - March 19: Friending, posting & updating: Life skills for the future

Class 4 - April 2: Five ways to stay ahead of kids on Facebook

An optional lab comes before each class, where parents can work hands-on with Stanford students who will coach them in using Facebook.

We will share the times for class after we poll parents to figure out what works best for most people."