Category: E-learning Toolkit

Analysis and Reflection on Social Software

Facebook

Facebook is careful not to say that they own any of a user’s personal information or materials but they do state that a user grants Facebook non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable and royalty free licence to use IP content (video and images). They state that the user owns their content and information but that they have to control how Facebook shares it through privacy and application settings.

I would NOT use this with my students. I don’t see that Facebook can provide anything that I can’t find elsewhere in a more educational setting. I know that some teachers use Facebook in order to create a group and post homework assignments but I would rather put my students on an email group or give them read only access to a Google doc. I also think that there is a thin line with Facebook in regards to inappropriate access to communication between teachers and students. Students use Facebook to communicate how they wish with friends and to post personal photos. Teachers have the right do to this too without fear of their students viewing their personal information and images. That being said, I do have former students that have added me as a “Facebook friend”. I created a “friend list” for them whereby they can only see my basic information and they can’t see what my friend’s write on my wall or see any photos of me (the last thing I want my students and their parents seeing is a photo of me in a bikini drinking beer on a beach ☺).

I think that overall, Facebook does a fairly good job with their privacy options. They have many privacy settings that allow you to be as open as you want to viewers or virtually invisible. The only place where I take issue is the fact that they can use your images. I wouldn’t mind if they used a photo I posted of the Eiffel Tower but I wouldn’t be too pleased if the aforementioned picture of myself ended up somewhere other than where I posted it. That being said, I no longer upload images. I think that as long as users are aware of the terms of service, they can make informed decisions.

Delicious

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Delicious states that user’s have the ability to mark their content as private or public but says that they are not responsible for how third parties access or use public content. Delicious allows a user to retrieve and/or remove posted content but does not guarantee this with regards to backup copies of said materials.

I would definitely use Delicious with my students. It is certainly an appropriate site and is great for teaching students how to organize research, categorize information and share links. Since no personal information is openly posted it is one of the safer social software to use with students.

I think that privacy issues are represented fairly. I don’t really see any areas that are lacking.

Flickr

Owned by Yahoo, Inc., Flickr is similar to Facebook in that by submitting content such as photos, audio or video, Flickr has the right to use, distribute, reproduce or modify the content via world wide, royalty free and non-exclusive license. They do acknowledge that Flickr does not claim ownership of this content.

Flickr is something that I would consider using with my students depending on what other resources I had access to. I wouldn’t see Flickr as a “must have” but I think that it is an appropriate site for students as long as the photos being posted were not of people.

I don’t like the fact that Flickr can use your content without permission. There is also a stipulation in the terms of service that allows Yahoo to disclose a user’s content information and content in order to comply with legal process, enforce the TOS, respond to claims that any content violates the rights of third-parties, respond to your requests for customer service or protect the rights, property, or personal safety of Yahoo!, its users and the public. These are such broad reasons that I think the disclosure of anyone’s information and content could be remotely justified which I see as a conflict with user’s privacy interests.

World of Warcraft

Owned by Blizzard, World of Warcraft expressly states that a user does not own his/her account and that that account is forever the property of Blizzard. Since user aren’t uploading content, there are no policies regarding it but there are very strict regulations about how to proceed in chat and what appropriate names for characters are.

I don’t think this is appropriate for my students (intermediate elementary aged) although I know that many teenagers play this game at home.

The privacy interests of members seem to be represented logically.

Overall Impressions

This assignment definitely had me on my toes with regards to processing the legalities of site usage. I wasn’t that surprised by the amount of control that these sites can wield over personal information and content but I was surprised that each site seemed to have a very generalized set of conditions whereby they could disclose a user’s information. I think there are a lot of great social sites out there but I have been operating with the policy that if I don’t want something to be public, I won’t post it on one of these sites. I think many people (read: kids) operate too freely with these sites, especially Facebook and MySpace without really understanding the terms of service. This assignment further validated the fact that I show my students how to change their privacy settings in Facebook and have a discussion with them about public access. As a teacher, I operate with the knowledge that my students use these sites and that all I can do is teach them how to use them safely and responsibly. I may be biased, but I think that educators should follow suit with this.

The toolkit activity didn’t necessarily expose me to anything new but it did, however, force me to think about what synchronous communication tool(s) I would use if I were running a course via LMS. I briefly explored Skype and Wimba and reflected on Elluminate – a synchronous communication tool available to BC teachers that I used very successfully to complete a group project in ETEC 510. I loved Elluminate because of all of its affordances – the way you could have audio, visual or both, the “whiteboard”, the web tour option which allowed one person to navigate the web while the group watched and many other features. The downside of Elluminate is that for a free account, the maximum number of participants is 3 people. The best part about Elluminate, from an assessment and accountability point of view, was that you could record your chat session and save it as an audio file. This worked well in the group setting as we had one session that a group member couldn’t make so we had our session and then sent the audio so that the missing member could listen and be quickly “on the same page”.

Wimba seems to be a good option for synchronous communication although I don’t think that it is free. I searched around on the web and I couldn’t tell how much it cost but assuming it costs money, I can’t see myself using it with students unless I was working in an environment that paid for WebCT/Vista with Wimba integration… not too likely in the K-12 world (yet). I logged into the Wimba site the was set up and everything looked relatively easy to navigate. I haven’t actually ever used Skype before so it was nice to do a little research on it. Many of my friends have been using it as a communication tool and I could really see myself using it with students in the K-12 setting. The fact that it is free is a huge factor and I also like that it is a “cool” site in the eyes of kids. I like the idea of taking a “cool” site and having students use it in an educational way (ie. Skype, Facebook etc.). I guess the biggest consideration would need to be access to the correct technology for students if I was going to include this as a “mandatory” activity. I know that my beloved MacBook Pro has everything built in but many computers don’t include microphones, video etc. I don’t see video as educationally necessary for my target students (middle school aged) so a Skype voice call seems the most appropriate, accessible and least distracting.

This is an area that I feel moderately comfortable with having some experience with many of the skills mentioned in the toolkit. I have used both Dreamweaver and nVu in order to create an ePortfolio. This was a requirement at UBC during my B’Ed in 2006-2007 and I was hired as a “tech coach” to show my peers how to create a basic layout (or storyboard) for the ePortfolio and then translate that into either Dreamweaver or nVu. In my experience, they are both straightforward programs to use as long as you remember to “mirror” your basic page for formatting purposes. I think the challenge for me was uploading to the web using an FTP.

Regarding HTML, I was always a bit scared viewing the html source for a page and seeing an explosion of nonsensical characters. I just learning some html code this year because of the MET and because my ETEC 510 group was using Mediawiki. There are a lot of great html “cheat sheets” on the web which were helpful and I still use basic html for bolding, italicizing and underlining in MET discussion boards. I would not choose to write a site using html but I feel that given all that is available, that wouldn’t be necessary.

For this activity, I went through “Web Pages that Suck” and saw some sites that almost made me cross-eyed! I did find the checklist a bit daunting because it was so extensive and many of the items didn’t apply to my particular experience or needs. I have a current website and hosting for the purpose of having my own Mediawiki and because I thought I would need this for my ePortfolio (I am now going to use WordPress as my main shell and link to my own site). My site is www.pezonk.com. I feel that even though it is a basic site, it doesn’t “suck” largely due to the fact that I created it in iWeb which utilizes many of the considerations under “Design Questions” on the toolkit page. I would use iWeb in the future if I was required to make a website.

Much of this activity was simply review for me but I did like the guidelines laid out in “Design Questions” especially given the terrible, blinding “sites that suck” that I went through. I did learn something new and that was about cascading style sheets. I haven’t heard that term before and the resource provided was useful in explaining what they are.