Teaching Social Networking Skills- Proposal
Education by Design Project Proposal – ETEC 510
Teaching Social Networking Skills
Helping educate students and teachers about social networks
By: Keke Gai, Maurice Last, Andrew Olson, and Diana Wilkes
Due Date: February 8
The Task
1. Key Frameworks – What is the focus of your design project? How are you situating your design activities in the academic literature? What/Whose ideas about learning and learning environments are relevant? What/Whose theoretical insights and perspectives frame your thinking about the particular group of learners your project targets? How are you framing the primary educational activities? How are you framing the use of educational media? (approx. 2 pages/approx. 600 words)
2. Intentions and Positions – What do you intend to accomplish by means of this design? What does scholarship in Education have to say about placing value on this particular cluster of goals? What might be a counter-argument to placing value on this particular set of outcomes? How do the stated goals of your project fit, or not, with larger sets of goals (e.g., globalization, a School District position paper, and so on…)? What is the predominant technology that you will use? Why this technology? (approx. 3 pages/approx. 900 words)
3. Key Concepts and Contexts – What is the knowledge (both conceptual “know that”, and procedural “know how”, that is the focus of your design project? What academic scholarship is relevant to thinking about this particular knowledge focus? What is the context for your design project? What academic scholarship is relevant to thinking about this particular context? Who are the learners who will be the target of the learning experience you are planning? What are the relevant academic literatures that address the kinds of learners your design targets? What are the most important perspectives on the group of learners your design targets? What are the points of contention in the academic literature regarding this group of learners, and kinds of educational design? What is your position regarding these discussions of point of view regarding this group of learners? How will this affect the design? (approx. 2 pages/approx. 600 words)
4. InterActivities – What kinds of dynamic objects will you create for carrying out your designs in a specific context. The possibilities are endless, and include: website, podcast, animation, simulation, game, unit plan, layout for media lab, workshop plan and activities etc… What are the main steps you need to take to produce the materials that will support InterActivity? How will the /objects/learning materials be produced?
It will also be important for your group to think about how you will submit your dynamic objects for evaluation. Will you need a website, a course shell in a learning management system (like WebCT or Moodle), a wiki space, etc.? It will be important for your group to work out with your instructor – ahead of time – what your specific needs are for your project so that you instructor can assist your group. In past offerings of ETEC510, students have drawn upon their own resources at their local institutions as well as those at UBC in order to complete their project work.
This assignment will be marked out of 100 points and will contribute 15% of your final grade. When your group has agreed to the final version of your proposal, send the assignment as an e-mail attachment to your instructor.
Key Frameworks
The focus of our design project is to produce a vehicle to teach safe and educationally effective uses of social networking. Our design will be frameworked with the concepts of constructivist learning environments in accordance with Jonassen (1999) and making use of the concept of knowledge building communities that was put forward by Scardamalia (1994).
We are envisioning a learning environment that relies heavily on a social networking construct (we shall be using Ning, an open source and free social networking hosting tool to create our core interactivities). As constructivist learning is the overarching philosophy, and we seek to create a knowledge building community, we will provide a framework for the (virtual) students to work in that will enable them to interact as a community, and at the same time help provide the critical feedback that is so necessary to make that learning environment work be successful.
Scardamalia (1994) stated:
“the classroom needs to foster transformational thought, on the part of both students and teachers, and that the best way to do this is to replace classroom-bred discourse patterns with those having more immediate and natural extensions to the real world, patterns whereby ideas are conceived, responded to, reframed, and set in historical context”.
We feel that we can foster the transformational thought about the topic by using the tools that we are trying to teach about in the use of the teaching. What better way to teach effective use of a tool, than by using the tool to show how it can transform thinking and build knowledge! The context is real for the students – today’s youth are heavy internet users and the use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is close to 100% (Myrberger 2010), so the concepts behind using a social network are not new to them: we will not have to teach them how to use a social network explicity, but rather how our class social network will be run, the rules and the restrictions. This is the baseline. The community of users will be expected to build the knowledge on how to do everything else on the Ning site. Those that need less time to become familiar with the tool will be expected to help out those that need more time. Constructivism will be threaded throughout the activities and will constantly guide how and what we ask the students to do.
We have also noticed that this tool could be used in a collaborative manner for teachers to build resources of ideas and activities and issues. The catalogue of resources would be available for teachers to choose themes and to pose problems to the students, so the students could then build their community of knowledge.
Intentions and Positions
The designers of this project intend to co-construct an on-line learning environment where learners will be immersed in an authentic situation that enables them to learn appropriate social networking etiquette while partaking in an actual social network. That is to say they will be learning how to do what they are doing while they are doing it! The purpose of this design project is threefold:
1) to foster awareness in learners of how to participate in a social network in an ethical/safe manner,
2) to provide a CLE that provides learners/educators the opportunity to build knowledge and develop skills (problem-solving/critical thinking/internet literacy) collaboratively within a dynamic interface and,
3) to provide educators with a differentiated and challenging educational instrument that will aim to develop/refine actual social networking skills.
In addition to the social networking site within Ning, the designers will generate three other spaces to encourage successful use of the Ning site. These are: a Google Docs space, a timeline and a social bookmarking page. Before these are explained, let’s elaborate upon the purpose of the design.
First of all, it is paramount for the initiators of this project to foster awareness in learners of how to participate in a social network in an ethical/safe manner because this is the ultimate objective of the project design. The social network will enable learners to participate in discussions and a range of learning experiences that will promote their understanding of how to use a social network safely and constructively as an educational tool. In order to reach this objective the designers must ensure that “the desired, relevant actions are readily perceivable” (Norman, 1999) to the users. It must be an engaging interface with explicit affordances to create a user-friendly space. Much like the designers of the 5th Dimension website, we too agree that “there has to be some place for the kids to be that’s safe, and hopefully that could promote things like their education, their connection to new technologies, their ability to work with other people, their connection to colleges and university as potential goals that they may have for themselves in life.” (5th Dimension, 2009).
Secondly, it is essential for the designers to provide a CLE that provides learners and educators the opportunity to build knowledge and develop skills (problem-solving/critical thinking/internet literacy) collaboratively within a dynamic interface. Vygotsky’s theory of social learning is central to any effective social network as it stipulates that “learning is a collaborative process” and that there is an inherent potential for students to learn called the zone of proximal development which is the “level of development that the learner is capable of reaching under guidance of teachers or in collaboration with peers” (Vygotsky, 1978). Therefore, the social network we create will enable students to build on their level of actual development and in this mode they will be extended to their full potential. The designers also want to focus on knowledge-building. Scardamalia declares that “knowledge-building discourse is at the heart of the superior education that we have in mind” (1994) and not only will the Teaching Social Networking Skills Ning site venture to do just that it will also guarantee that learning is not asymptotic due to its’ co-constructed nature. This design affords goal-oriented learning (Colins, Brown & Newman, 1989) within a social structure than promotes collaboration. The social network will create and support a community of learners who will have a vested interest in its’ success and accuracy.
Thirdly, the designers would like to provide educators with a differentiated and challenging educational instrument in the Ning social network that will aim to develop/refine actual social networking skills. We want to ensure that we make this space interesting enough that students will actually use it and to provide enough applications that students can meet the objectives. We asked are “knowing and doing reciprocal in nature” as suggested by Barab and Duffy (1998)? If they are, then a social network that teaches about how to use a social network safely, is the best design.
As clearly outlined in the Interactivities section of this paper, we will be using four spaces: a Ning site, a Google docs page, a timeline and a social bookmarking tool. These technologies were selected for the following reasons:
| Technology | Justification for this technology |
| Ning site |
|
| Google doc |
|
| Timeline |
|
| Social Bookmarking tool (ie. Delicious) |
|
Furthermore, possible counter-arguments to this educational design project will be minimal. Perhaps, a critic could say that although “Ning networks are subject to COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) regulations,” (Ning Wikipedia, 2010), there is still an innate danger to using a social network. But because the social network is created for the purpose of educating learners on how to use a social network safely, that perspective is easily rebuked especially in light of the fact that the teachers are directly involved in this CLE. A second counter-argument could be that the learners may not want to use it. The entire motivation for young people to use a social network is because it involves a topic of their interest. However, clever design and engaging learning experiences could prevent this. A third argument could be that this educational domain is incredibly time-consuming. In school districts that follow a more cognitive focused, and rigorous curriculum, this entire process may not be feasible without some creative planning.
Lastly, the stated goals of this project are positioned well within these larger-scale goals:
| Large scale goal | How this design project fits: |
| Globalization | If “globalization describes an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through a globe-spanning network of communication and trade” (Globalization wikipedia, 2010)- then this social network is an excellent precursor in that it perpetuates how interconnected the world is- especially in terms of communication |
| An international school who wishes to acknowledge the cultural implications of social networks | International schools/universities that have a diverse student body who are quite itinerant would find this beneficial because the issues from the cultures from within their diverse student body would foster an appreciation and respect for how a social network has some social responsibility |
| A School who wants to market their focus on ‘cyber-safety’ | This social network could be a great selling feature to potential parents as the school who uses this educational tool clearly acknowledges the possible dangers and is proactive in their approach through the participation in a CLE |
| A Class who needs a CLE to build knowledge | As a Citizenship, ICT or Social Studies project: students could monitor and document how the social network enables them to learn how to be safer and develop their internet literacy/social networking skills |
As outlined in the table above, there is a myriad of opportunity to use this ‘Teaching Social Networking Skills’ Ning social network to meet a range of larger-scale goals.
Key Concepts and Contexts
This section explains what the focus of this group’s project is. Essentially, the major focus of the project will be to address social networking skills and several related concerns in children’s use of social networks while showing the educational use of those same social networks. A constructivist approach will be expected to be used by the teachers making use of this tool.
This group’s role in this learning project is as implementers and designers who are responsible for the curriculum design, planning some possible learning activities for students and the implementation of the learning tool on a social network. The teachers using the learning tool this group is designing will need to monitor, analyze, and regulate the learners’ development of important skills (Jonassen, 1999) in the area of utilizing a social networking site. As suggested by Jonassen (1999), a learner will obtain suggestions, feedback, comments, help, and cognitive analyses from the learner’s teacher. Since the design team is also expecting knowledge building as a community as suggested by Scardamali (1994) to occur, individual learners will be expected to give suggestions, feedback and help to other learner using this learning tool.
By using a scaffolding model to support instructing design we can provide instructors with three different approaches that include “adjust the difficulty of the task to accommodate the learners, restructure the task to supplant a lack of prior knowledge, and provide alternative assessments” (Jonassen, 1999). The modeling will ensure that the project’s content will meet different students’ requirements and capabilities. This may be implemented as different levels or options that are not age specific, but rather based on the ability range that of the group of learners. For example, perhaps beginner, intermediate and advanced, or non- enhanced, larger font enhanced, simplified vocabulary enhanced options might exist.
Moreover, as a facilitator, an instructor would also pay attention to how to promote sensitivities to other cultures and develop internet literacy, both of which mesh with the primary purposes of teaching safe usage of social networking sites and showing the educational value of social networking sites. Developing Internet literacy is a key approach for teachers to attempt to make the online-based learning environment diversified, interesting, and challenging. Donald J. Leu (1997) proposes a number of important functions of increased Internet literacy; he presents that being literate stimulates the learning process from several different perspectives, such as learners’ navigational strategies, new forms of critical thinking, and new information generated by updated technologies (Donald.J. Leu, 1997). As such the design team will keep these findings in mind as they design and implement the learning tool.
As part of the safe usage of social networking sites, the learning tool will deal with a number of issues that might influence students’ learning; for example, online harassment and bullying, security and privacy issues.
This group is expecting that learners that are novice social network users will be the primary users of the learning tool, but that any person could use the learning tool to get a better idea of the issues, problems and some solutions problems in the usage of social networks.
Inter-activities
In order to present the ideas of this project and make them useful for educators and students we plan to create four different spaces that can be used to promote online education, etiquette and safety. In this section, we will outline the Ning site we plan to create for students and teachers to practice social network skills. Secondly, we will create a page on Google Docs that can be used as a collaborative tool to exchange ideas in regards to new challenges that students face online. Thirdly, we will create a timeline of how to implement and teach these skills at schools. Finally, we will create a Delicious or Diigo site for the sharing of resources and pertinent websites between educators. The following is a breakdown of how each of these inter-activities will work.
The primary platform for educating students about social networking skills and awareness will be a Ning personalized social network. The web address for this site is http://etec510.ning.com/. At the moment the site is open to access from the public; however, there are settings to make it private to only invited members, which may be necessary with students involved. The site has many functions that allow for educators to simulate social networks. The three most important functions that need to be emphasized are file sharing, including videos and pictures; discussion boards, also known as wall spaces or blogs; and chat functions. Each of these areas can be used on Ning to model the dangers and etiquette associated with them.
While the Ning can certainly be used to model many of the practices that we will want to teach students and educators, Google Docs will be used to collaborate with other teachers on an ongoing basis to continue to be aware of the ever-changing dangers associated with this field. On this site, educators will be able to share their experiences about the most recent devices, sites, and technology-related issues that they experience with their students. From this site the solutions to deal with each new development in educational technology can be dealt with in a collaborative way.
The third step that will be taken in this project will hopefully help fellow educators and administrators to implement the teaching of social networking awareness and Internet literacy. A timeline will be created that outlines the steps needed to begin to teach these skills in schools. The irony behind creating such a timeline is that skills being taught will continually be changing depending on the advances in the technology being dealt with. Nonetheless, for people interested in this endeavour it is important that they have an understanding of the steps that need to be taken in order to best educate their students and staff. It needs to be understood that a new idea, such as this project, will take a matter of time to change the culture of the school that is implementing it. Primarily, it will take a change of culture amongst the staff, but also on the part of the students to change, in many cases, habits that have been in place since they first began to use social networking sites.
Finally, the website Delicious or Diigo will be used to begin to bookmark online resources for educators to use in regards to etiquette, safety, privacy and literacy on the Internet. This website allows for tagging of particular websites based on keywords or interests. It is also collaborative in that other educators have the opportunity to tag and save the websites they think are pertinent to this topic. Furthermore, Delicious allows educators to write a summary of each of their book-marked websites in order help others determine if they will be useful or not. The link to Delicious could be posted on both the Ning site and the Google Docs for easy access.
The hopes of these inter-activities are to provide an opportunity for both educators and students to practice social networking and Internet literacy skills. Furthermore, the activities suggested are designed to make educators and administrators feel like an established process has been put in place to deal with the issue of educating students. In regard to this last point, using some of these activities to teach students and educators alike would be a reasonable response to parental concerns about the role schools are taking in keeping their students safe and informed about Internet use. While it is not suggested that these activities will end all of the problems that students face on the Internet and on social networks, the hope is that it will minimize some of the dangers.
Sources
An introduction to the 5th dimension. (date not specified). Retrieved February 1, 2010, from The 5th Dimension website: http://5thd.communication.ucsd.edu/Startmenu.htm.
Barab, S., & Duffy, T. (2000). From practice fields to communities of practice. In D. Jonassen and S. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments. Mahweh, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Colins, A., Brown J.S., & Newman, S.E. (1989). Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching the crafts of reading, writing and mathematics. In L.B. Resnick (Ed). Knowing, Learning and instruction: Essays in honour of Robert Glasner (pp. 453-494). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Donald.J. Leu, J. (1997). Exploring literacy on the internet: Caity’s question: literacy as deixis on the internet. The Reading Teacher, 51(1), 62-67.
Globalization. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved February 3, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization.
Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional design theories and models: Volume II. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lax, L., Taylor, I., Wilson-Pauwels, L., & Scardamalia, M. (2004). Dynamic curriculum design in Biomedical Communications: Integrating a knowledge building approach and a Knowledge Forum learning environment in a medical legal visualization course. The Journal of Biocommunication, 30(1), 1-10.
Myrberger
Ning website. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved February 7, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ning_(website).
Norman, A. Donald. (1999). Affordances, Conventions and Design. Interactions, 6 (3), 38-41. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-building communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.
Social network, (n.d.). In Wikipedia, Retrieved February 6, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network.
(Vgotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society. London. Harvard University Press.
My Reflection: Teaching Social Networking Skills
I found the entire Design Project to be a learning journey with a steep learning curve. I had no idea what it would be like as this was my first MET and online course. It was very interesting to see how different people with different backgrounds/strengths collaborate and work within different timezones.
| What I learned | What I found challenging | What I’d do differently |
|
Overall, designing this project with my colleagues was a highly rewarding, sometimes stressful, constructivist collaboration where I was forced out of my comfort zone and learned a variety of new skills. I can see the value of using this style of online-learning with my own students. My team enabled me to ask questions without feeling stupid and were generally very informative and helpful to work with. I look forward to my future courses in MET. One down, nine to go.
Lifelong Learner…..
Diana Wilkes
Design Project Team Peer Review- Team #2
- List the members of your group, including your own name first.
Diana Wilkes, Andrew Olsen, Maurice Last and Keke Gai
- Give the title and describe your assignment in general terms.
Our design is entitled Teaching Social Networking Skills. We collaborated on the major paper in a Google doc. We create a Ning http://etec510.ning.com/ as the student platform, a Wikispace https://teachingsocialnetworking.wikispaces.com/as the teacher platform and a delicious page http://delicious.com/teaching_sn/ as a bookmarking site. The latter three online learning spaces will enable teachers to facilitate a learning experience that will teach students important online social networking skills while learning about social network safety/privacy/etiquette.
- Describe your contribution to the assignment.
I have made significant contributions to the final paper- including adding relevant literature references to ‘my’ sections and those of others. I formatted and created the tables, edited the references and added sentences to reduce the disjointed nature of the paper (as often happens with multiple contributors). I wrote the Intentions and Positions section, Verifications section and Reflections section and made a significant contribution to the Introduction. In terms of our Interactivities I made a number of contributions to the Ning site including adding photos, videos, blogs and events. Within our Wikispace, I created the Introduction page, Module 2 and made the Module 4 link. I created the delicious page and made reference to it in the Wiki/Ning in Module 2.