Bans Stifle Social Media’s Potential
3/2/2009 – NSTA Reports—Lynn Petrinjak
Are you LinkedIn? Do your students Tweet during a field trip? If you’re like many NSTA members, the answer is “yes” with a caveat: Not in school.
Preliminary results of a recent online survey of NSTA members show more than half use social media websites at school for professional development and to obtain classroom resources. However, more than 80% of respondents said their schools block internet access to at least some social media sites. In some cases, educators work around this obstacle by downloading materials at home or using personal laptops with wireless connections or other mobile devices in the classroom. Others use methods their administrators—and information technology (IT) colleagues—would likely disapprove of, such as enlisting students’ help to circumvent site blocks or accessing proxy servers.
Some educators follow protocol, submitting requests to administrators or IT staff for access to the sites they need. However, many report frustration with this method. Among the comments shared:
- “I have to justify it to the principal, who then has to justify it to the administration, who then say no anyway.”
- “I have to ask for it to be unblocked on my computer, but our IT guys aren’t here on site.”
- “Beg and plead, but usually to no avail.”
- “Impossible, they won’t listen.”
Such comments indicate these obstacles cause many teachers to simply give up using social media tools in the classroom. Unfortunately, these teachers miss out on opportunities to collaborate with colleagues, and their students lose the opportunity to collaborate with one another.
Gaining Access
James Gates, a recently retired computer science teacher, thinks simple ignorance lies behind many school districts’ decisions to block access to social media sites. Now working as a technology consultant and posting daily technology tips during the school year on his blog, Tipline, he notes most school districts in his area of south central Pennsylvania block all blogs. “There has to be a misunderstanding of what the tool is…the reason they cite is ‘it’s a distraction’ or problems with cyberbullying, problems carrying over to school” from an online forum, Gates says. Other administrators may point to the potential for inappropriate contact between educators and students. “Some teachers can take 50 kids over to Europe for 10 days, but they can’t [communicate with students through social networks]. It drives me crazy.”
Teachers have an “ethical obligation to teach kids” how to use social media appropriately, declares Ben Smith, a physics teacher at Red Lion Area Senior High School in south central Pennsylvania. “Our district has a policy that teachers may not be ‘friends’ of students. If we can’t see the site, we can’t advise them ‘that’s not appropriate.’ Kids post these things and think they’ll go away.”
For instance, Smith helped set up a program providing all students with e-mail accounts, which he pilot tested with his class before making it available to the general student population. Although the pilot went smoothly, problems quickly emerged. “In the first day [of being available schoolwide], we had 73 blocked [e-mail] messages,” he says. Messages were blocked for containing content deemed inappropriate by filters, such as comments on other students’ anatomy. “It was a good demonstration [for students] that there are places you should not be doing that. Personal here, school or business [over] here.”
Bonnie Bracey Sutton, curriculum developer at Thornburg Center for Professional Development in Lake Barrington, Illinois, says parent education can be key to increasing access to social media. “I like to bring parents to school and show what their kids have been missing,” she says. “People who know technology but don’t know how it is used block [web-based collaboration sites like NING or various wikis].” Sutton says she has been working with others in the field, “fighting [to ensure] the beauty of the internet—access to wonderful resources—isn’t diminished by fear.”
When attempting to access a blocked site, Gates advises first identifying its value, asking the question, “What do these tools allow us to do that we can’t do without them?” Then educators have to learn why the site is blocked and who can unblock it.
“They have to be very clear what objections are to that site, meet with the superintendent or whoever makes the decision,” Gates suggests. “If the objection is to blogs because students might embarrass the school, they can show platforms with teacher moderation. They [administrators or IT personnel] may say ‘we block all wikis because anybody could post anything.’ They don’t want to teach proper behavior…[that is] negligence of our responsibility.”
To support their request to use wikis in the classroom, Gates suggests teachers use the Flat Classroom project wiki as an example. Working from Georgia and Bangladesh, teachers Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay set up a wiki as an assessment project for their classes. “They built a wiki together, used NING to communicate with each other,” Gates says. “They used NING to upload videos. That’s how the kids got to know each other in an environment they’re familiar with that has the feel of a Facebook.” He adds the Flat Classroom project now includes 13 classrooms in eight countries.
Social media offers many benefits to educators, according to Smith. Free online software such as graphic organizers can be substituted for software requiring licensing fees, and students can work on team projects from multiple locations.
“I think social networking has a bad name…we have to remember one of the best ways to educate kids is a collaborative environment,” contends Smith, who also conducts workshops and seminars on education technology as a consultant and partner inEdTechInnovators. “We need to leverage the technology. We’re trying to make the case to administrators: You need to go in, create an account, and see (what it’s about).”
Smith cites the photo-sharing website Flickr as an illustration. “Kids on field trips will take pictures on site and then upload them [to Flickr] using their phones. By the time we get back, the pictures are already ready to use,” he explains. In addition, his physics students use school laptops to photograph labs, then post the photos online. “This serves as [a] great review. Sometimes we say everybody upload; sometimes we assign one group. Sometimes I let kids sign licensing agreements. For example, if one lab group’s pictures didn’t work out, they can ask permission to use another group’s pictures.”
Because online options for educators continue to expand and evolve, the question of access will continue to need to be addressed and revisited.
- I often work in areas of the United States where there is little or no connectivity , sometimes it is because of the lack of broadband, but often the lack is the understanding of how to create safety on the Internet. Many of the beautiful sites I love to share are blocked.
- To get clarity, I attended the Wired Kids Symposium that is created by Parry Aftab.
- Here is what I found . We can use this to share with teachers, technology experts and others who use fear as the motivation for limited use of the Internet.