Learning 2.0

Web 2.0 tools can be used to enhance learning by students, and contribute to learning 2.0. However when we should be teaching our children to use the web correctly and safely, we are banning its use. While the world is collaborating and teaming up, and our students are using social networking sites at home, we are banning the use of these tools in school. If it weren’t so tragic it would be amusing to me that districts block social networking and video sites. All websites are moving in this direction. They might as well block access to the Internet all together with this sort of strategy. All websites are moving to the model of interaction, communication, and social networking. This is the evolution of the net. We will not go back to Web 1.0. We will never gain control of the communications on the Internet. To ban the use of these tools is to create dinosaurs of our students and put America’s economic future at risk. This is especially tragic as research shows that school administrators that make the decisions to ban video and social networking sites are afraid of activities that are just not really occurring that often in cyberspace. According to recent research, students report being vicitimized on the net less than 10% of the time, and spend 50% of their time using social networking sites to communicate about learning and school work. The banning of the use of social networking sites can be seen as tantamount to a First Amendment free speech violation, resulting in chilling effect on speech. This seems Draconian given the tools available to teach the safe and effective use of social networking sites and the internet such as those listed below. We need to spend time teaching our students to be safe, just as we do in other areas of life (like driving, dating, eating healthy, etc.) not banning them from the world. The following articles show statistics about how students really use the net, and provide tips for using social networks and learning 2.0 tools effectively in the classroom.

http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf

This is a research based article on social networking in schools by the National School Boards Association that provides some interesting insight into how students are actually using the internet. According to this article 59% of students talk about education related topics online, and 50% talks specifically about class work. Only 0.8% of students say that they have actually met someone in person from an online encounter, and only 3% of students reported that someone tried to repeatedly meet them in person as a result of time spent on the internet and in social networking sites. It is time that educators challenge administration to back up their fears of internet use by students in the new learning 2.0 world.

http://cms.myspacecdn.com/cms/SafetySite/documents/SchoolAdministratorGuide.pdf

The Official School Administrator’s Guide to Understanding MySpace and Resolving Social Networking Issues

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1568480-1,00.html

Article on bringing schools into the 21^st Century.