Our committee on technology use wrote the following article to help explain social network sites to the teachers and staff in our community. What explanations have you found particular helpful/unhelpful at your school?

Understanding Social Network Sites
Catlin Gabel Technology Advisory Group

Last fall, the Technology Advisory Group (TAG) distributed a survey to solicit your advice about a vision for technology at Catlin Gabel. A number of you asked about social network sites: what are they, why are they popular, and what can we do about them? TAG devoted some time this year to study these questions. While we did not find simple answers, we did find a great variety of “expert” perspectives that helped us better frame the issue. We found several passages in these articles particularly helpful.

Social network sites (SNS) put people in contact with each other. You can maintain a personal profile, create links to “friends,” and share information with them. Online communities have existed since at least 1985, with the founding of The Well. Some of today’s leading social network sites include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Ning. To better understand one, register a new account for yourself, and then search for “Catlin Gabel!”

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com
Global Education Collaborative: http://globaleducation.ning.com/
Independent School Educators Network: http://isenet.ning.com/

What value do social network sites have for our students? Are they simply time-wasters?

When it comes to socializing with friends, youth prefer in-person (unregulated) encounters. They turn to SNSs when they can't get together with their friends en masse or when they can't get together without surveilling adults. They are desperately craving an opportunity to connect with their friends; not surprisingly, their use of anything that enables socialization while at school is deeply desired. [1]

Bridging social capital reflects the benefits we receive from our “weak ties” — people we don’t know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas. Undergraduates who used Facebook intensively had higher bridging social capital scores than those who didn’t, and our longitudinal data show that Facebook use preceded these social capital gains. [2]

How does classroom management change? The above quotes help explain students’ motivation for using Facebook during class, but they do not help guide us toward particular classroom management strategies.

What effects do social network technologies have on our students’ social interactions with others?

Weak ties (e.g., casual acquaintances, colleagues) may not be reliable for long-term support; their strength instead is in providing a wide range of perspectives, information, and opportunities. As society becomes increasingly dynamic, with access to information playing a growing role, having many diverse connections will be key. [3]

While all humans need to feel connected to each other or to some cause, there are also times when we simply want to disconnect, and disconnecting is becoming increasingly hard thanks to social networking technology. [4]

How concerned should we be about online cruelty and privacy?

For teens, who can be viciously competitive, networking sites that feature a list of one’s best friends and space for everyone to comment about you can be an unpleasant venue for social humiliation and bullying. These sites can make the emotional landmines of adolescence concrete and explicit. [5]

It’s a lot harder to accept that social media is mirroring and magnifying all of the good, bad, and ugly about today’s society, shoving it right back in our faces in the hopes that we might face the underlying problems. Technology does not create bullying; it simply makes it more visible and much harder for adults to ignore. [6]

Our students are growing up in an increasingly interconnected world, mediated by social web technologies. The better we understand this landscape, the better we will be able to adopt the pieces that best support teaching and learning, relate to our students’ social needs, and manage a changing classroom environment.



Resources Cited

1. boyd, danah. “The Economist Debate on Social ‘Networking’”. Zephoria January 15, 2008 http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/01/15/the_economist_d.html
2. Ellison, Nichole as quoted in Dubner, Stephen J. “Is MySpace Good for Society? A Freakonomics Quorum” New York Times February 15, 2008 http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/is-myspace-good-for-society-a-freakonomics-quorum/?hp
3. Donath, Judith, as quoted in ibid.
4. Chazin, Steve, as quoted in ibid.
5. Donath, Judith, as quoted in ibid
6. boyd, danah, as quoted in ibid.


Further Reading

boyd, danah, and Ellison, Nichole. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html>

Lenhart, Amanda. Madden, Mary. Macgill, Alexandra Rankin. Smith, Aaron. Pew Internet Life Report: Teens and Social Media <http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/230/report_display.asp>

VanPetten, Vanessa. For Parents: Why do Teens Use Social Networking Sites? (video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6YT6sEDZiE

The Economist: Debate: Social Networking. http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?action=summary&debate_id=3




tags: sns, facebook

Things are heating up in anticipation of the summer. Simultaneously, we are wrapping up the current year and starting work summer work. I have the following going on now.

Evaluations: It's time to write annual staff reflections for the IT department. Each individual completes a self-evaluation, I write a performance review, and then we meet to discuss.

Laptop Survey: We should perform an annual review of our 1:1 student laptop program so that we adapt and improve it over time. Unfortunately, we have not taken a close look at the program since its inception in 2003. This year, we will resurrect three comprehensive surveys from 2003, for parents, teachers, and students. This should provide us with useful information to reflect back to the community in the fall.

Arrivals and departures: Unbelieveable. We have about 30 personnel changes to make, what with the annual arrivals, departures, leaves of absence, long-term substitutes, and internal transitions.

Communicate fall plans: Present at closing faculty meetings to share new plans for the fall.

System replacement: Collaborate with laptop and desktop replacement for users.

Summer training workshops: Finalize schedule, teaching assignments, and open signups.

Web application programming: I am updating the bookstore, admission inquiry, curriculum map, and signup/volunteer applications. I am also going to migrate and adapt my community service script to this school.

insideCatlin redesign: Our intranet has grown like crazy this year, now comprising dozens of courses, tools, links, media galleries, and hundreds of pages of content. It is proving impossible for newbies to find what they are seeking on the site. We plan to transform the home page to provide clear guides to the content that users seek.

Public-facing web site platform migration: We hope to move our public-facing web site to Drupal with the help of a development/consulting firm.

AppleScripts: Finish developing AppleScripts to speed up laptop cleanup and deployment.

Core switch refresh: Follow the progress of this major project and participate when needed.

(I'm sure I've left off something important!)


While I am impressed with the manner in which the "blogerati" continue to raise the conceptual level of the ed tech discussion, I fear that this also makes it increasingly irrelevant to the daily work of practitioners like us. Last night, I caught up with my aggregator. Today, I have put together this list of urgent projects and routine tasks. The contrast struck me. I am all for questioning assumptions and redesigning education, but let us not forget the incremental changes that practitioners can make today to improve their work.

Theorists continue to raise the bar for the changes that we should make. They are right, but we also need to answer how to facilitate such discussions within the busy structure of daily school life. Our school is stable, successful, and thoughtful. We are not a technology school. We would like to improve broad aspects of our school -- student workload, weekly schedule, global education, experiential learning, service learning, and affordability, among others. It's hard to find time to focus just on technology, so we squeeze it in where we can, like so many other initiatives. As such, we must make changes over the long term, making technologies available to innovators and helping them share their work with colleagues. We measure progress over a span of years.

I question the focus and timing of the K12 Online Conference this year. It takes place for ten consecutive weekdays. Who can leave school for ten days of professional development in October? Who can follow hours of video presentations while continuing to work at school? This conference is no longer designed for practitioners. Sure, it's possible that I might view these videos later on, but then the online community has moved on to other pastures. The strands seem more abstract than last year -- will practitioners find enough meat to inform their practice?

(rant complete)

tags: k12online

This week, 25 students begin their "senior projects," volunteer internships around town in environmental, bike, journalism, and many other types of organizations. The senior projects coordinator asked me some weeks ago whether students should blog about their work. I replied, "of course!" First, I asked what the students used to do in past years and attempted to determine how well that would translate to blogging. Students had before completed weekly reflections and sent them to their advisors for comment. The coordinator wanted these reflections to be more visible within the school, so that other students could gain ideas for their work. Blogging seemed like an excellent fit.

I had been waiting for an opportunity like this. We run both Moodle and Drupal on our intranet, both within a "walled garden" -- restricted to our students, employees, and parents through authentication. Moodle is for discrete groups within campus (classes, clubs, committees), whereas Drupal is for community-wide content. This clearly fit the description of "community-wide," and Drupal automatically provides a blog to each user. It seemed ready to go.

I provided a how-to article to explain blogging to new users. I was pleased to include blog writing tips gleaned from a variety of sources.

• Write a distinctive subject line.
  
• Use a conversational tone.
  
• Keep paragraphs short.
  
• Vividly describe your experiences. Which of your experiences are most compelling?
  
• Link to organizations or articles you reference.
  
• Post images when you can. They really do say a thousands words.
  
• Invite your readers to comment.
  
• Determine a writing schedule and stick to it.

I found it a little tricky to explain to teachers how to directly find the blog of a specific student. Drupal's default search looks for content, not users (does anyone know how to modify this default behavior to include user names?). Thinking that most people would miss the Users tab in the search results, I created a new menu item that links directly to user search. I didn't want to use the node profile module, which would take on a lot of overhead and unwanted features just to make users searchable. At our school, students don't need to modify their profiles much -- they don't rely on the intranet to describe themselves around school!

Nearly all teachers prefer to find out about new student blog posts by email notification. We use the subscriptions module to add "subscribe blog" and "subscribe post" links to each post. This also permits the author of each post to automatically receive email notifications of comments to their content. This is essential in this environment, in which blogging is new and people are unlikely to check the web site frequently to notice new blog posts and comments.

If blogging takes off here, RSS subscription may increase in popularity. Given that our entire site is login protected, we require the HTTP auth module to use HTTP instead of web authentication for specific URL paths. This allows RSS readers and "podcatchers" such as iTunes to subscribe to login-protected Drupal feeds.

I didn't require students to tag their posts with particular keywords to separate them from other types of blog posts, mostly because no one else is really blogging at this time. I don't really see an easy way to do this, as requiring people to select from a list of tags would seem too strict. Does Drupal have a group blogging feature other than Organic Groups? It would be great if blog posts off a specific link automatically gained a particular tag.

A half-dozen students have posted in the first day. One challenge is completion -- the system does not have a strong disincentive for those who do not post regularly. After all, the students have volunteered to undertake a senior project in the first place. The writing itself has been pretty lively and interesting so far -- one student even included an image! I will watch closely for the development of each student's blogging voice and look for signs of impact from writing to the community in this fashion.

Reflective blogging occupies the middle space in the senior project, between proposal and final project. We may extend the online support for senior projects by collecting proposals and final projects online as well and linking all three content types together for others to review in the future.

Do let me know your lessons learned from similar student blogging or Drupal configuration experiences.


tags: blog, internship, pbl, drupal

Should document cameras be ubiquitous in the classroom? A colleague pointed me to the following article, to which I penned this response.

I take away three significant uses of document cameras:

• Magnification: in classes that work frequently with very small objects, a document camera may show more detail/be more convenient than simply passing the object around the class.
  
• Sharing student work: in classes that frequently share student handwritten/drawn work, a document camera may increase the convenience of making the work of an individual student visible to the entire group.
  
• Manual manipulation: you can project a piece of work as you draw on it.

Playing devil’s advocate, a document camera would provide little advantage in the following situations:

• The class shares objects of larger size (can be easily seen or too large to fit under the camera).
  
• Holding the object, not just seeing it, has high pedagogical value.
  
• Students complete work to share with small groups, the teacher, parents, or themselves, not the entire class at once.
  
• The teacher doesn’t spend much time teaching from the front of the class.
  
• The teacher prioritizes aural or text-based instruction over visual.
  
• The class is primarily organized around student-led projects.
  
• The depth of the object is important (3D vs. 2D).
  
• The classroom is physically organized around “activity centers.”

I guess I find document cameras a good fit for the teacher-directed or whole-group classroom, not for the project-based, small-group, or student-directed classroom. Your thoughts?



tags: elmo, visualpresenter, documentcamera

Last week's New York Times article titled "Blackberry's Quest: Fend Off the iPhone" explained the pressure that the iPhone is placing on Research In Motion to add consumer-friendly features to new Blackberry devices. The following statement caught my eye, due to its implications for school laptop programs.

Indeed, R.I.M.’s allure to carriers and corporations may be irresistible and impossible for Apple to weaken, even if Apple improves iPhone security. But some analysts still wonder what will happen to the BlackBerry’s dominance when everyday consumers start driving growth in the smartphone market.

We have seen a similar pressure arrive here at school. Students choose their own laptop platform when they enter the high school. Historically, their choice mirrored their parents' platform adoption: about two-thirds PC. Two years ago, the platforms drew even -- 50/50 PC and Mac. Last year, 90% of students chose Macintosh.

Though we have understood for a while that Apple's popularity has skyrocketed here, we have to this point limited our analysis to the computers' "cool factor", the iPod, the new acceptability of Mac to Intel parents, and the good Mac experiences these students have had in their earlier years. The Times article underscores a broader trend. Our experience with Apple may repeat itself in other areas as students and teachers apply their consumer experiences to their work at school. We may need to stay abreast of technology developments beyond the realm of business.

TiVo is another good example. Many teachers now expect a different interaction with television than before, thanks to the rise of DVR in the home. Now, we have two TiVo devices on campus, though we have had to learn how to operate them within a network environment, with its increased challenges.






tags: blackberry, iphone, tivo

I got my hands on two mini laptops at ACPE this week, the CTL 2go PC and the HP 2133 Mini Note PC. Along the same lines as the ASUS eeePC and the XO, they promise to provide a low-cost device that is suitable for basic classroom use. The HP appears to be just a low-cost version of a regular laptop, whereas the CTL 2go sports a carrying handle and rugged case. The 2go is also less expensive: $379 for the Linux version. The HP keyboard is nearly normal size, whereas the 2go has small keys. While I am sure that these fit kids' fingers just fine, will they have any difficulty adjusting from full-size and small keyboard formats?

Although both models offer a Windows option, I can't believe that the computers would remain useful for more than a couple of years running Windows XP on an underpowered processor. With Linux, we would have to learn to manage Linux on the desktop for the first time, but the machines would likely last longer. We would also have the opportunity to choose a Linux distribution with a super kid-friendly user interface. We will evaluate and purchase a handful of these devices next year with an eye to purchasing classroom units by next summer. I would like to hear your experiences with inexpensive, classroom laptops.

tags: ulcpc, acpe08

Mary Beth Herkert
Archives Division, Information Resource Management Unit

Work on home computers is part of public record
Records retention schedules
Preserve only for as long as it is needed to accurately document agency functions
Core Elements of a Good Policy
- appropriate use statement
- access to employee computers and accounts; privacy notice
- retention of e-records
- policy awareness
- training
- compliance
Email management manual online (state archives)
Alternative communication devices
- IM
- PDAs
- Chat roms
- Blogs
Public employees -- no expectation of privacy
Individual employees make decisions about what to retain (realistic?)
"Knowingly destroy public records" - okay if it's a mistake
Synchronizing email to home computer -- yes, the home computer could be subpenead
Messages that need to be saved for a long period of time should be exported from the email system
Create a filing system that is the same for both electronic and paper records (e.g., naming conventions)
Voicemail is not a public record for retention in Oregon
No jurisdiction over a private school -- subject to federal requirements
Audio recordings need to be kept for one year, even if minutes were taken
May not need to capture email messages if records are documented elsewhere (e.g., teacher communicates progress report to parents)

Mary Beth Herkert
Archives Division, Information Resource Management Unit
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us



tags: acpe08

Panelists

Jeff Huggin, Snoqualmie District: Dreamweaver, ASP, Access, IIS

Mike Stewart, Mt. Angel School District: Win 2k3, Dreamweaver

Austin James, Redmond District (OR): hosted solution (SchoolWires)

Jeff Dobbs, Beaverton: wrote a custom content management system (Oracle)

Mike Finstrom, Highline District (WA): custom CMS the supports Dreamweaver and Contribute

How did you go about determining what systems you would use?

Found experienced developer at the ESD.

Developed culture of people who embraced content management system. Now looking at Sharepoint for next iteration. Allows for both novice and advanced users.

Mandate from superintendent that every teacher would have a web page, and look and feel would be consistent. Moved to a hosted solution. Teachers focus on posting content rather than what color it would be. Hosted solution was equal in cost to licenses for Frontpage.

Ease of use a huge barrier to buy-in: from Frontpage to MS Word to emailing items to tech department. Currently a voluntary system who send content to tech director via email.

Cost considerations, Puget Sound ESD developers built different modules for administrative functions.

How many staff members in your department are dedicated to web?

Communications person is the key, tech staff devote small fractions to site. ESD helps with back-end tweaks.

One small fraction.

Office staff already typing this content for newsletters. Just have to copy and paste into web interface. Does switching and routing for district, does not devote much time to web site. Does CSS, HTML, graphic development (1-2 days per month).

Web content staff member. Who owns the web site? IT department or others? Distribute stake in the web site. They are going to have to enforce policy, IT trains and supports.

3 of 5 district communications staff devoted to web site. Each district has a web manager. HR posts jobs, contract changes. One SQL developer. Goal of 1000 contributors. Moodle didn't extend. Randy Orwin has hacked it to extent.

How many teachers are maintaining sites?

Web-publishing through FirstClass -- a lot of teachers were initially turned off by it. A number of teachers have gone out on their own. Working with ESDs to facilitate blogs, wikis, and web pages. Union prevents requiring teachers to create web pages. Receives blog requests daily. Biggest issue is support. Planning to use Drupal for teachers. (Beaverton)

Will have 100% by next year, per superintendent. Top goal is communication/contact information.

25% on teacher web sites daily. One teacher records lessons every day and posts them on web site.

Made it fun and easy, focused on content.

Biggest challenges

Support and training is very taxing on district resources. Space is a huge consideration, as all content teachers use now go into the database.

Training.

Administration wants more professional-looking web site with zero budget.

Other issues

Posting links to off-site content (okay with panelists)

Pictures of students online: centralized permissions to one form, to allow blanket ability to show many pictures on web site. Want to centralize permission for student academic work next.



tags: acpe08

(uStreamed here)

Chris is challenging the audience in several ways. I think he's trying to raise the level of urgency for school reform.

School 2.0 is simple: progressive education with 21st century tools
Who has read Dewey (a few hands) since grad school (almost none)
There is no silver bullet (to school reform)
Stop blaming schools
Industrial age created the current dominant school model
Funding does matter, because it pays people
John Cleese: "If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."
"Lifelong kindergarten" (MIT Media Lab)
"Scary thought: What are we willing to unlearn and relearn?"

How?
Pedagogy matters: be more intentional about the way we create our schools
Create caring institutions
Student-centered
Inquiry-driven
Meta-cognitive
If you give a test, you are not doing project-based learning
Incredibly empowered students

What do we gain/lose?
Have to give up breadth as the goal
Technology must be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible
Don't talk about "what" before "why"
Certain technologies are not additive, they are transformative (Neil Postman) (e.g., printing press)
Process trumps product
Simplify all the easy tasks, so we have time and energy for the complex
Research -> Collaborate -> Present -> Network
George Siemens: Connectivism
What if kids did "academic" networking, not just social network?
Transparency: we can invite the world to our schools
What is the role of the teacher in the age of Google?



tags: acpe08

(very broad liveblogging)

David Pogue "sticks his neck out" to predict five rising technology trends.

Convergence of phone and internet

VOIP, Vonage, Skype, TMobile @ Home

GrandCentral.com (phone call forwarding)

Google Cellular (texting Google to get business lookups, weather, driving directions, etc.

800 GOOG 411

Voice-to-text, e.g., SimulScribe, CallWave

Popularity Dialer (funny way to get out of a meeting)

RFID transmitters (embedding transmittable digital information in library books, shipping pallets, pets!, clothing, prisoners!)

FuturePhone: free international phone calls via Iowa due to a government subsidy for calls from rural areas, but they've been shut down as a result!

A la Carte Video

Hulul

iTunes Video

Web 2.0

Facebook, YouTube, Craigslist

"Blogs can put a face on a company" -- a more personal face on an organization (my note: this works when regular employees post about daily life, not when an organization posts official notices in a blog-type format)

Less well-known sites that are incredibly successful at putting people in touch with each other around certain information:

Prosper: person-to-person microloans

Kiva: Microloans for international businesses

Goloco: ad-hoc carpooling

E-Petitions: UK site for anyone to create a petition on any topic

Who Is Sick?: tracking what illnesses are going around



tags: acpe08

I am hoping to blog a lot while at ACPE the next two days. I thought I would start with an idea that has been nagging at me for a few weeks. I often hear school leaders explain that technology is like "a pencil." I think they mean that technology should be incredibly simple and easily accomplish the job it is designed for. Pencils intimidate few. We don't think too often about the pencil itself. Is it sharp? Eraser intact? Okay, let's write.

Reducing technology to a pencil overlooks the manner in which it connects people to content and each other. The resultant learning environment is the focus, and it's not a pencil. It is a complex, interwoven fabric through which students and teachers move to find, analyze, create, and share. The pencil (or whiteboard) metaphor discourages people from exploring the unique types of learning environments that one may create with technology.

Yes, we deserve technology systems that are easy to use, but we also deserve richness and power from these educational tools.

I have learned that wireless access points don't die -- they degrade. Both at school and at home, WAPs become flaky in their old age, so that the wireless network exhibits problems easy to attribute to other issues such as channel conflict. I just upgraded our wireless access point at home after weeks of "a wireless error occurred" messages from our Macs. Thankfully, the new one has made our access point happier again, even though the marketing "RangePlus" gimmick still does not allow wireless to reach all the way to the bedroom (must be a PC thing). Our new AP: Linksys WRT100. The old, which served us well for years: Netgear WGT624. I also went a step further with wireless security this time, using WPA instead of WEP, locking down admin access to wired computers only, and only allowing known MACs online. I wonder whether manufacturers are actually pushing people away from WEP, since I couldn't quite get how to correctly configure encrypted WEP keys. If we ever have a 802.11n device in the house, this device is apparently compatible.

tags: wireless, 802.11g

Check out PayPal Storefront, a little Flash widget that you configure on PayPal's site and then embed on your web site. It's very elegant and quick. I am using it to sell a benefit recording of the Maru-a-Pula Marimba Band. The widget even allows any user to copy the widget code for their own site, making possible the viral distribution of a mini-store!



tags: ecommerce, marimba

This week, I learned the next step: embedding a Google map with our data on our own (password protected) site. Twice in the past two years, I have created maps of students and employees in schools using BatchGeocode and Google Earth.

Given the flexibility of Google Earth, online resources cover a wide variety of ways to use the Google Maps API. Drupal's GMap module is best suited for user submission of locations as separate nodes or a RSS feed. BatchGeocode provides locations in a single KML file, which I learned is XML for maps. The Google Maps API can index a KML file directly, but I didn't want to submit our KML file to Google to index, and my tests of the strategy didn't work anyway. GMapEZ is a special set of scripts using the Maps API but requires you to format your placemarks as conventional HTML links. Ultimately, this article at XML.com provided the most successful strategy for me: embedding points directly into the page and then adding listeners to create the popup information boxes. Embedding all the points keeps the data within our password-protected space, too.

You can accomplish this basically in a one-liner per placemark:

var marker220 = new GMarker(new GLatLng(45.51584,-122.702752)); map.addOverlay(marker220); GEvent.addListener(marker220, "mouseover", function() {marker220.openInfoWindow("Richard Kassissieh");})

A student included me in this project to create a carpool site for the Catlin Gabel community. Families find each other using the map and then post offers and requests for rides.



tags: googlemaps, gmapapi

Paul, nice job introducing the trip planning project using Google Earth. I especially liked how you explained how teacher authority (or "genius," as you put it) is actually the face of experience. Students think you magically know all the answers, but this is actually because you've done the project many times before. Then you explained that moving the project into Google Earth means that you will encounter problems for the first time and not be as able to answer the students' questions correctly the first time. I couldn't read the students' reactions to this ... perhaps they were mildly stunned. I hope that the more adventuresome among them will view this as an opportunity to lead the exploration and define the project for future classes! Onward and upward. Good luck with it.

tags: googleearth