social networks

As I mentioned in earlier blogs, my school does not yet have an Ed-tech teacher or an on-site IT person so we are relatively restrained by how much technology and for sure modern technology can be going on. So for this blog on social networking I am not going to focus on what my school is or is not doing within the world of social networking rather I will focus and open up for discussion a question raised in chapter #5 in Web 2.0 how-to for educators. Namely, do teachers believe that students will learn better and develop better skills when being taught with traditional methods or if they believe students will learn better and develop new and unique skills when teachers create a learning environment that includes Web 2.0 social networking tools. My own opinion is 50/50. We still live in a time when some students grab on to the traditional, non-technology, approach better than the web 2.0 approach. And yet teachers need to recognize that in order to meet the needs of other students in their class the web 2.0 approach would be greatly beneficial. I suspect that in 5 years from now my answer would be different. What are your thoughts?

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Comment by Greg Golkin on April 19, 2012 at 1:26pm: I have done much research on this subject, but i will boil my thoughts down. The most important opportunity that emerging technology creates is the chance to retain and improve student engagement. Students have countless ways to distract themselves when they leave the classroom without the presence of classmates or teachers, but if we can keep them engaged with academic content a bit longer, better outcomes will follow. I have been calling this idea the Persistent Classroom. We do not need to change the way that the formal learning process happens, but give students an opportunity to interact with the content in new ways.

But choosing the right tools can make all of the difference since you don't want to introduce more opportunities for procrastination. I just released a free project called ThinkBinder (http://thinkbinder.com/) which aims to solve these issues. ThinkBinder gives students (and teachers) a platform to communicate and collaborate in a safe, private environment without the distractions of other social media. Our toolset includes group discussion, file management, text / video chat, group calendar and a collaborative whiteboard. Again the product is completely free and will always remain so. I would love to hear any feedback you might have.

social networks

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