Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education/Technology/Social Media

Emerging technologies have changed the shape of today’s classroom. The question that continues arise is “What is the best type of the new technology to use with my students?”  The answer to this question is not always a simple one. It depends on availability of resources and also what the teacher is comfortable doing with the classroom. This article will review some of those resources and their positive and negative attributes.

Threaded Discussions in Education
According to a web teaching article by Dartmouth College, online discussions allow students to interact with classmates outside of class. Students have the freedom to log in at any time from any computer that has Internet access. They can use these discussion areas to clarify issues they encounter with their assignments, discuss topics raised in class, or can start a new discussion with their peers. The positive side of using threaded discussions is that it can save time for the teacher when preparing for daily classes, allow shy students to feel free to discuss topics they may not be able to do in front of the class, and also it allows for topics of a sensitive nature to be talked about without being a face to face discussion. The negative side of discussion threads are that it can add to a teacher’s workload if the discussion has too much participation. This can lead to many hours of reading and responding for the teacher. On the other hand, there can be too little discussion if the topic does not catch the student’s interest overall. An online discussion can be facilitated by using chat rooms, discussion boards, and instant messaging programs. Teachers can encourage participation by being more involved, giving credit or extra points in that class, allowing anonymity, restricting access (making discussion board or chat only accessible to the students), encouraging collaboration, and being sure to be realistic about the expectations of the topic and discussion board.

Web 2.0 in Education
According to the article at Web 2.0, Web 2.0 refers to the improved form of the World Wide Web and new technologies, such as, weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, social software, and online web services. Some characteristics of Web 2.0 are applications being delivered entirely through a web browser, users owning and exercising control over their own data, an architecture of participation that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it, rich, interactive, user-friendly interface, some social-networking aspects, and enhanced graphical interfaces, such as, gradients and rounded corners (new to Web 2.0).

Social Networking
There are many social networking websites available to the public at no cost. They are designed to allow people to network online much as they would in person. The sites have a registration process which asks many questions which will allow their profiles to be matched by queries of other users. These websites include blogs, groups, photos, music and videos. Some examples of social networking websites are MySpace, Facebook, BlackPlanet, Bandwagon, and Friendster, Classmates.com, Flirtomatic, Livejournal, Myyearbook, Passado, and Stumbleupon. MySpace is the third most popular website used in the United States and has 54 million profiles currently. These websites have gotten a lot of attention, especially in the education setting. There are positive aspects to these websites, which include, being able to easily setup a class page which can include blogs, videos, photos, and other features. This page can easily be accessed by providing just one web address, which makes it easy to remember and easy to type in for students who may have trouble using the keyboard or with spelling. It can be customized to make it easy to read and also with as much or little color as desired. You can also change the font and put audio with it to make it accessible to students with visual disabilities. There are also many potential negative aspects of social networking to be heavily considered. Because of the nature of the sites and the age of its users, there is the potential for sexual predators to surf the personal websites of the students. According to the Howstuffworks website, there has been at least seven non-violent sexual assaults on minors that have been linked to the MySpace website, and also at least one murder has been linked to a MySpace website. There is a rule that you must be at least 14 years old to register for a MySpace webpage, but this is often lied about by both people who want to appear older and also those predators that want to appear younger than 18 years old. Due to these issues, students will need to be advised on the safety issues regarding these websites. They should be informed of ways to stay safe, such as, not giving out personally identifiable information, not meeting in person other MySpace users, unless you know them in person, employing safe surfing techniques that would be used in any blog or chat room type website, and immediately reporting any suspicious communication via a social networking website to someone that the student trusts, such as, a teacher, counselor or parent.

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