January 16, 2008
Debating Online Social Networks
At Economist.com, Michael Bugeja, director of Iowa State University’s Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication and a frequent Chronicle contributor, is engaged in an Oxford-style debate with Ewan McIntosh, a journalist and education-tech consultant in Scotland, on the following proposition:
“Social-networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom.”
Some highlights . . .
From McIntosh:
“In Scotland, I’ve been fortunate to work with thousands of schoolchildren and hundreds of teachers, creating mini social networks based around a rather traditional ‘social object’: the classroom. Students have been empowered to publish not just their best work, but the many drafts it takes to get there. They’ve received feedback from ‘real’ people outside school, and, surprisingly often, the occasional expert has paid a visit (my personal favorite: the professional diver that corrected one student ended up being invited to visit the school to demonstrate the various bits of kit that go into a marine-biology dive). . . .
“And even if it’s not happening in schools, learning is about far more than what happens behind the school gate. Lifelong learning is the policy du jour, and rightly so. We are all learners, all the time. Ubiquitous social technologies help us connect to those who can help us learn when we’re outside the domain of formal education. One of the biggest iTunes success stories this past year has been Coffee Break Spanish, run by a teacher from his home in a seaside town on the West of Scotland.”
His side of the debate itself is proof of the networks’ value and power, McIntosh argues. “It was written one Sunday afternoon, with collaboration over Twitter, the mobile phone and Web-based social-networking tool, with teaching colleagues from the U.S., Scotland, Canada, England, France, New Zealand, and Australia. Has social networking changed the face of educational methods? Almost certainly: yes.”
Bugeja, on the other hand, argues that such networks tend to make their users compliant, appeal to their superficiality, and are commercially motivated and unaccountable for ill-use. Bugeja acknowledges that the debate itself is evidence for an argument, but not the argument McIntosh is trying to make. “I likely will lose this debate,” writes Bugeja, “because I am putting myself on the firing line in an online forum relying on those same consumer technologies to mimic debates which, as members of the Oxford Union society know, are manifestly more exciting to experience in real time rather than QuickTime.”
Why is educational technology altering pedagogy rather than the other way around? Bugeja asks.
“We must analyze use of social networks in education with a high degree of skepticism to ensure time-honored standards,” he writes. “Otherwise we may realize belatedly that those standards had value—social rather than financial—and that we inadvertently shortchanged our students who above all need to think critically and interact interpersonally to succeed in a diverse, multicultural world.
“Social networks advertise access to this diverse world while simultaneously confining users to affinity groups so as to sell, sell, sell.”
There’s much more to these arguments at the site, where you can also vote on which side you think is winning. You need to sign in, but it’s free.
Alex Kafka | Posted on Wednesday January 16, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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Colleagues/
For additional information about social networking services and education, readers may wish to visit Friends, my blog devoted to social networking services for “engaged library services” at
[ http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/ ]
/Gerry
— Gerry McKiernan Jan 16, 01:09 PM #
Let’s see Hitler used tool X for bad end Z—therefore tool X is bad. No, that argument does not make it in most books.
There is a theory about all this social network stuff—social indexing theory. It starts off with findings like this—most people operate at the 7% level of social indexing of interests, needs, and capabilities of those around them, their acquaintance group. What would happen were we to up that from 7 to say 20%? How could we sustainably up that to 20%? What would happen were we to lower it from 7 to 3%? These and similar questions get researched in this field.
Social network sites increase social indexing among existing nets who make the transition to the new net media, and they form new groups also with higher than average social indexing levels. However, the increments measured thus far are rather small—from averages between 7 and 11% to averages between 9 and 15%, in some very recent studies.
— Richard Tabor Greene Jan 16, 04:55 PM #
From my experience, these social networks are about as tight as an old sock, and about as influential as a cabin full of bunkmates in a three week summer camp.
— marci Jan 16, 06:44 PM #