Classroom 2.0 Discussion: "Should teachers and students be "friends" on social networking sites?"

The discussion topic, "Should teachers and students be 'friends' on social networking sites," was started back in December of 2008 on the Classroom 2.0 ning site. I subscribe to this discussion via email, and it has been interesting to see how it has 'evolved' over the past couple of years (I'd say it hasn't really 'evolved' much at all...most posts are pretty dogmatic in the assertion that students and teachers should never connect via the social web).


Anyway, below you'll see my latest response to this discussion. Stop over to the discussion at Classroom 2.0 if you'd like to view the discussion history and leave some thoughts of your own. (click here to see my personal facebook friending policy that I wrote back in 2009):

It's amazing how this conversation has moved along over the past few years.

All I can say is that I'm really glad I'm connected to a variety of  students, past and present, using websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. On one level it has given me TRUE insight (not insight influenced by sensational media reporting) as to what students are doing in these spaces. Contrary to what the media might report, youth are using these spaces for creative and useful purposes like study and collaboration, commenting on the latest news of the day, mobilizing social justice campaigns (remember the 'wear purple day' in support of LGBTQ youth last fall?), socializing in healthy ways with friends, connecting with family members, playing games, sharing photos, etc.

The experience of connecting with students in a variety of ways and spaces allows me to talk intelligently to other adults about what students are doing with these powerful communication and collaboration platforms. 

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. 

Danah Boyd on "Teens and Social Networks"

Dr. Danah Boyd, who is an expert in the area of youth and online social networking spaces, spoke yesterday with Steve Hargadon from Classroom 2.0/Future of Education. The MP3 audio recording is included below and I highly recommend you take the time to listen to it.

Dr. Boyd's dissertation "Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics" focused on how American youth use networked publics for sociable purposes. It is important that all teachers, parents and administrators have the right information about what people (youth and adults alike) are doing with networked spaces.

As a related note, here is a link to my policy regarding forming connections with people (youth and adults alike) in online spaces. I wrote this as a way to provide some transparency about my online connections.

Audio Recording from Danah Boyd's Talk with Steve Hargadon:
http://audio.edtechlive.com/conversations/danahboyd.mp3

Parent Education Opportunity: Wednesday, September 9th at 5:00 pm Pacific

This live Internet broadcast on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 looks like an excellent educational opportunity for parents, teachers and administrators. Jane Nelsen will be speaking on the topic of parenting in an age of the Internet and social networking. Participating in this event is super easy and only requires a computer connected to the Internet. Please spread the word and pass this link out to as many people as possible.

For more information on this event and for details on how to participate live, click here to visit the event info page at Conversations.net.

Digital Citizenship Panel Podcast

A special thank you to Patrick Woessner for inviting me to participate in an awesome virtual panel session with the faculty at his school today. The topic of our conversation was, "Digital Citizenship," but it certainaly meandered to include a wide range of related topics. It was fun to contribute on the virtual panel with the likes of Keven Jarrett, Damien Bariexa and Chris Betcha. The recorded audio is posted below and is also available via the Digital Down Low podcast on iTunes.

What does your email signature look like??

With the movement to a new email system, I took the opportunity to create a fresh email signature. I took a screenshot of my signature and included it in this post. In the spirit of openness and transparency, I decided to include the major online workspaces that I use on a regular basis in my email signature. I hope that in some small way this models some possibilities for the many parents, teachers, students and administrators that I work with in my position as the instructional technology coordinator at my school.

How about you, what does your email signature look like??

Are We Ready for...Government 2.0??

I picked this one up from the Remote Access blog last night as I was surfing my reader. At 60 minutes, this is quite a long video, but it is worth a look to gain more familiarity with how online communities work. Folks who are skeptical of online communities as being "real" places where people develop relationships, collaborate, and empathize with one another will most likely struggle with this piece. Nevertheless, it is worth a look...

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

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."

Vanessa Van Petten to Join Parents as Partners on Monday, November 17th

Sorry for the late notice on this, but I did want to let you know that the Parents as Partners team is being joined by Vanessa Van Petten on Monday, November 17th at 9:00 PM Eastern (02:00 GMT on November 18th).

Vanessa will be talking with us about teens and social networking. Join in the conversation live over at Edtechtalk.com/live.

To learn a bit more abot Vanessa, view one of her clips below:

Chris Lehmann unconference session at Yahoo Digital Citizenship Summit

Chris facilitated an un-conference style discussion in the afternoon of last Friday's Digital Citizenship Summit. During this session he skyped in one of his teachers, talked about strategies to introduce administrators to web 2.0 technologies, iChatted with some students, and talked about social networking as a learning platform.

Below is the recorded audio from this session...



Link to audio file

Parents as Partners Tonight!

Lorna Costantini will be moderating tonight's "Parents as Partners" conversation at GMT 1:30 am (8:30 pm EST in Canada/USA). The focus of the conversation will be social networking and parenting in a web 2.0 world. I'll be joining the conversation to talk about some of the parent education opportunities we're offering here at USM. Cindy Zautcke, USM parent, will be joining in the conversation to share her experiences with her three children and parenting in the web 2.0 world. We'll also be joined by Rhoda Cipparone, parent and community rep on the Niagara Catholic Regional School Council, who will share her experiences in this area as well. I'm really looking forward to the talk tonight with Lorna, Rhoda and Cindy. Social media and schools is a topic that I thoroughly enjoy talking about and it should be an interesting webcast.

To access the talk, you'll go to the Webcast Academy's "Live" page and click on one of the media players in Sandbox A. Follow the directions at the "Parents as Partners" page for a more detailed description of this process. We'll be using one of the World Bridges chat rooms, but at this point I'm not certain which one it will be. We will be sure to announce the chat room at the throughout the webcast.