Many of the schools I work in block certain social networking sites like http://MySpace.com and http://YouTube.com. This works like a placebo for teachers daunted by Web 2.0, giving them a false sense of security.
Not only are there hundreds of other social networking sites out there not-blocked by their district firewall, but there are myriad ways for students to get around the security (as a simple Google search shows). In addition, sites like pbskids.org and others are beginning to introduce games that have social networking elements to them. Online real-time social interaction is becoming ubiquitous in websites.
Yesterday I was in a school computer lab doing some work, and an 8-year-old girl was keeping me company. Very chatty, very innocent. I asked her what websites she uses and she said MySpace.com. I wasn't all that surprised, as it wasn't the first instance of un-knowing underage social networking I've come across. When I asked her if she was aware that you had to be 14 to get a MySpace account she told me her older brother set it up for her.
The example that comes to mind, and not just for MySpace but for the whole Internet is, the Mall of America. You can either lock the doors so the kids can't get in at all, or you can go in with them, and teach them as you explore (at least until they learn the ropes). Instead, in many of our schools, we're letting them go in unaccompanied, for their first time, robbing teachers the opportunity to... teach.
The technology has come on so fast, an already overly burdened teacher doesn't have the time to learn about all these new concepts and websites. And the students seem to be able to pick it up and use it by rote. So we've got a bit of an unbridled "Wild West" atmosphere, with an added wrinkle: just as the Internet negates people's disability, physical location, race, and gender barriers, it also negates their age.
The 2nd grade classroom teacher takes his class to the lab twice a week for about an hour. A venerable and classic personality, he admittedly doesn't know the difference between MySpace and Google. So he has no idea the student is not only participating in social networking outside of her age-group, but she's violating school rules.
The 8-year-old girl is savvy enough to know her username and passwords for multiple websites. She's also subscribed to an email list that provides her a constantly changing link she can click to get to MySpace by way of a proxy, bypassing the school's firewall (http://www.unblockmyspace.com/).
While part of it, the real issue isn't how to control access to particular things, it's how do we teach children how to use these tools effectively, productively, responsibly. One approach may be to use social networking in curriculum, whether it be on sites designed for the purpose (like www.imbee.com) or an intranet site developed on the school's LAN (www.drupal.org). One thing is clear, the more teachers and parents learn about these Web 2.0 tools, the better.
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