Schools, blogs, Xanga, MySpace...What's it all about, Alfie? Part V

The Personal and Educational Value of Social Networking, Blogs and Blogging
I'd like to talk about social networking first.

Since there has been so much negative publicity about the social networking sites (like MySpace and Facebook), in my contrarian way I started wondering about what real needs the sites are filling.  After all, they wouldn't be so popular if they did not fill a real need in teens' lives.

Why are teens and young adults flocking to social networking services like Myspace and Facebook?  Are they doing something new, or are they exhibiting old behavior with better tools?   What needs

Personally, I think a bit of both is the answer. 

The teenaged years are a time when the child is moving away from the family -- hopefully, a place that offered security, attachment, and identity--into the larger world.  The child in making that foray into the wider world usually experiences anxiety about finding new sources of security and attachment, and is forging a new sense of identity.   

The child in that journey is making new attachments -- making them, breaking them, forming new ones, returning to the old.  How do kids do it?  With talk. With talk, and talk, and more talk.  With hanging out.  The old stereotype of the girl  endlessly talking on the phone (as the image from the 1950s suggests) captures another "new" technology--the phone. 

Think about some of the iconic images from the 1950s.  The kids in Happy Days were forever hanging about Arnold's Drive-in,  hanging and talking and talking and hanging.  The kids in the Archie comic books hung out at the soda shop after school.

Many kids today have much less free time to just hang--to socialize, to learn how to entertain themselves, to try on different identities, to learn how to form webs of friendships, and to survive the conflicts that come up without an adult mediating.  It is my contention that  social networking software  may help kids mature.
 

According to Laura Kastner, a Seattle psychologist who specializes in adolescent issues,

MySpace's appeal to young teens "makes perfect sense developmentally because of their burgeoning identity," Kastner said. "They can try on different identities and make them up along the way. "It's like going to the mall times a hundred."

Another feature of the last 15 years in children's lives is that their social networks are more fragmented.  Among the kids I know, they have many overlapping social circles: the friends they went to school with, who now go to different schools (common in the transition from middle school to high school, and also common as families are more migratory); friends from non-school sports teams; friends from church or synagogue;  friends from the non-school theater group; and so on.  The social networking software allows these friends to stay in touch.

This year, it's all about MySpace. With almost 9 million members and 50,000 new users joining each day, "Are you on MySpace?" is a common question. ...." "A lot of people don't have time to stay connected anymore. This gives people a chance to do it from their home computers," added Josh.

Another expert pointed out:

``It connects you to people who you might not have seen in years,''  [MySpace user Tiffany Wang, a high school senior]  said. ``I find friends from elementary school on here.''

Susannah Stern, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of San Diego, said examples like these are not uncommon and, in fact, are beneficial to teens.

``Teens seek connections and confirmations through other teens,'' she said. ``Myspace allows teens to freely experiment in their writings and expression knowing that they will receive positive comments.''..."A lot of these sites are about young people connecting,'' Stern said. ``It's the sense of being in touch that is appealing to teens.

 

And one principal pointed out that the technology has changed but the mechanism hasn't, really:

Jerry Holloway, dean of students at Santa Margarita Catholic High, compares MySpace to a "party line" he used as a teen - 30 kids on one phone line, networking with semi-strangers.

The ubiquity of social networking software has also had an impact on teen etiquette: if you don't know someone well, and  know he or she is on MySpace, and you want to get together  the thing to do now is to leave  a comment, inviting that person to get together.

"It's a way to inform people about what's going on with my life," says Natalie Schneckloth, 15, a sophomore at Cedar Rapids Washington High School. "I'm not big with e-mailing messages. I could call everyone ... but since I'm at the computer anyway, this is an easier way to do it."

Social networking software also offers a way to link people with special interests together: This epilepsy foundation e-forum gives you a clue.  [Amy Lee is the singer with Evanescence.  Her younger brother has epilepsy.   She is using her fame to bring epilepsy out of the shadows.]

Does anybody here have a "Myspace.com" site? A few of her fans from evboard.com made a group site that you can join on Myspace. They have awesome info on the first page there all about E and it's so cool because they have this 'disclaimer' saying that they are not in any way affiliated with The Amy Lee Epilepsy Fund, they are just a bunch of her fans trying to support her and help her spread the word on this endeavor she's taken up. I think THAT is really awesome. I went and got a myspace site just so I could join it! How corny is that?

Many people conflate blogging and social networking services.   The confusion of blogging and social networking services was neatly captured by

I'm still a little peeved at that Vermont school principal who says that blogging is not an educational activity. It's just such an uninformed statement that I hope it's a misquote...  it's a knee jerk, blanket assumption drawn from the bad habits of a few kids who have not been taught to do better. And there is enough blame for that to go around. But don't blame the blogs. The fact is, Myspace is less a Weblog site than it is a community of adolescents making a lot of sexual innuendo who love the color pink...It's journaling, flirting, posing...none of which comes close to what it means to blog.

Moving from a close concentration on social networking software to considering  the social networking and blogging together,

For many, it's a place to express things that are hard to say out loud. "If you're in a fight and you don't want to have a big scene at school or something, it's easier to just get it all out with the typing and you can think about your words a little better," says Ashley Swank, 15, a sophomore at Iowa City West High School.

Blogging can help children who are facing real challenges, as Danah Boyd writes...

these services [MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal] help kids who are alienated come together and, sometimes, this means that they get validated in their alienation which exacerbates the situation... and this is a problem with some of the cutters [children who engage in self-mutilation for psychological reasons] on LiveJournal - they try to outdo each other with more severe images. But then I talked to a psychologist about the cutters and she pointed out that she's so thankful for LJ [LiveJournal] Now, she can see into the lives of people like her patients, better understand their psychology than anything they say in therapy and be a more effective therapist. Sure, she has to deal with the peer validation issue, which she admitted was more significant on LJ than in everyday life, but she said it's worth it because knowing what's going on in their heads helps her help them overcome the peer pressure bit as well as the actual damage. She told me it was far more effective this way.

From the About site for bi-polar children, Dan writes

The word communication, teen, and parent, rarely fall into the same sentence. Teenagers and communication with parents just don’t seem to mix well in most families. However, for teenagers with bipolar disorder, communication with parents is imperative to ensure that proper treatment is received by the teen. Most teens will not directly express how they feel to their parents; rather they will send subtle clues or they will confide in friends or support group members. Direct communication is not always necessary, but some form of communication is a must and this is where a blog can be a valuable tool.

2 Cents Worth had this vignette of the value of blogging to far-flung families:

I just received permission to post this message sent to me over the weekend.

…the father of one of my students is currently serving in Iraq and today he left 2 comments on his son’s blog. The child was so thrilled that his father had done this. That moment just reaffirmed how wonderful this process is and what powerful things can happen! I am still teary-eyed thinking about it and the boy’s reaction.

The value of blogging isn't limited to North American teens, as this story from the Shanghai news relates:

This begins with an interview with a female teenage blogger named Little Jiang.  She has just been accepted by an elite university in Shanghai, but she did not seem to be too happy.  When asked why she blogged, she explained that she is regarded as the 'nice and obedient' daughter by the neighbors, as her mother tells her what to wear each day, how much milk to drink in the morning and everything else.  She did not even have the right to say 'no.'  That is why she vents her frustrations on the blog: "How annoying!  What does mom want to control me?  Don't do this, don't do that?"  "Mom is yelling at me.  I don't know what to do."  And so on.

    Recently, Little Jiang published a post titled "I don't want to live with my parents" which resonated among people of the same age.  These others also expressed their own communication barriers with their parents.  The number of young bloggers is growing every day.  In Little Jiang's class, about one-third of them are bloggers.  Although they usually talk about their daily trivia, their friends, their studies and their love lives, about 30% of the content is about their families.  Little Li said: "I often hear my classmates write about their problems in coping with their parents.  Most of them say that their parents are very annoying.  I feel that many parents do not understand what we think and need!"

What about the academic value of blogging?  I want to consider two aspects here: the skills kids learn in the course of blogging, within or without the classroom.  John Mills, who is a teacher in England, runs a club to teach his pupils to blog:

Indeed, blogging is beneficial to pupils' learning on a whole range of fronts, as Mr Mills is keen to emphasise. "The children have to read, to find the information to write, so it's great for literacy," he explains. "And it's obviously good for ICT as they are working with design and the internet. Publishing on the web is something that is usually tackled by Year 8s, but this group is made up of Years 3, 4 and 5."

The club helps develop children's confidence and communication skills, too.

 

 

In March, the Eide Neurolearning Blog evaluated the effect of blogging on the brain

After surveying the general range of materials that the blogosphere has to offer, we believe the following basic largely supportive conclusions are warranted:

1. Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking
2. Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking
3. Blogs promote analogical thinking.
4. Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
5. Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.

The Eide Neurolearning Blog post wasn't a blanket endorsement of blogging for all, noting that "First, there are blogs and there are...well, blogs. The best of blogs are rich in ideas and promote active exchange and critique."

David Huffaker wrote an essay on The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom :

Blogs are both individualistic and collaborative. Blogs promote self–expression, a place where the author can develop highly personalized content. Yet blogs connect with an online community — bloggers can comment and give feedback to other bloggers, and they can link to fellow bloggers, creating an interwoven, dynamic organization. In the classroom, students can have a personal space to read and write alongside a communal one, where ideas are shared, questions are asked and answered, and social cohesion is developed.

Blogs can be multidisciplinary. Because reading and writing can be used in a variety of academic contexts, blogs are fungible across disciplines. Storytelling should not be relegated to language arts alone — students can express their perceptions on any number of subjects.

As classroom teachers use blogs in teaching, the thinking behind using blogging for education has grown up:

Blogging is not just writing online. It is different. It can be different, but because it is new, it is something that kids need to work to understand, and work towards. Some discussions last week around the blogosphere wondering if kids actually need to learn to blog. Having blogging turn towards becoming a connectivist form of writing and thinking, I believe that students do need to be taught to work in these ways. They need to see the potential, they need to see the implications of working this way. A weaving of ideas, of thoughts, of discussions can occur if we think about the implications of shaping our knowledge and our information in ways that fit our remixed, post - industrial society.

Drawing information from somewhere else, placing it together with additional information, thinking about the implications and concerns of this particular information is not necessarily new, but placing this synthesized thought online for others to access and work through themselves, possibly adding their own spin to it, is new for kids in school. The digital apprenticeships they are working through at home allow them to think in these ways and work these ways with their own personal interests. Bringing this to a school setting, where we expect kids to work with different types of topics and information then they may choose to at home brings this format of work and higher - level thought into our classrooms as well.

 

Sometimes blogging gets down to the nuts and bolts.  As this post from EduBlog Insights reads:

Then this from Sammey:

My thoughts on blogs
Hi my name is Sammey. My thoughts on blogs is that it help me to spell much better. Because I did not know how to spell that good. And I use to hate to write but now I kind of love to write. And I like to write more because people write me back. And it helps me to get my thoughts out about all the things that I need to say.

That's the second step. That's one that made me soar. You'd have to know Sammey and see how difficult writing is for him. He was working away and wanted this post just so! ...

This class is composed of an ever-changing group of "at-risk" students where "ups & downs" are the standard. They're not the typical group that gets to participate in many class sessions that would be open to the public. We're figuring out a lot as we go. The most frustrating part for me is that I can't write about everything I'd like. Some of the struggles, problems, happenings are just too sensitive. We never get as much done as I'd like. My clue to be patient, not my strong suit.  I look forward to turning  some more corners, knowing full well that along the way some days are going to be better than others.  But I have to tell you that it feels good to think that we might be able to include kids like Sammey and Keith in this learning process. Mrs. Baros (Special Ed teacher), Mrs. Tincher (Instructional Technology Specialist) and I will be teaching United States History to the next group.

So what are the lessons to be drawn here?  Social networking software is here to stay, because the users find it fills an important need.  Blogging has many manifestations.  Some are trivial, some are a waste of time, but many have both personal and educational uses (see Ann Davis's thought-provoking list)  These latter uses are just beginning to become recognized.  Blogging in academic settings will become a transformational use of technology in education.

The next post, Part V--What Should Parents and Schools Do?, has some specific recommendations on how to manage minors' use of these new technologies.

Some sites covering the academic value of blogging in K-12 education (in no particular order)

• Blog of Proximal Development , a blog by Konrad Glogowski, who teaches   Language Arts at the elementary level in Canada.   This blog is an attempt to vocalize some of my thoughts on this subject and comment on the impact that blogging and blogging communities have on my classroom and my students.
• Weblogg-ed,  a blog by Will Richardson, who is Supervisor of Instructional Technology and Communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington, NJ and a "  blogvangelist".  The site is dedicated to discussions and reflections on the use of Weblogs, wikis, RSS, audiocasts and other Read/Write Web related technologies in the K-12 realm, technologies that are transforming classrooms around the world.
• Blogical Construction: Since my dissertation will be about using blogging to teach writing, I thought it only made sense to write the dissertation in a blog. I hope that this will be my only metapost. After this, only drafts of the dissertation will appear.
• Adventures in Educational Blogging: A modest attempt at discovering if web logging can help students develop their voice and explore their own interests while writing for a real audience.
• EduBlogs: Scottish take on the real value of blogs and podcasts in education.
• 2 Cents Worth:  David Warlick's thoughts about education, teaching, learning, and the 21st century.
• Edublog Insights:  Anne Davis, of   Georgia State University, writes about  the use of weblogs in education.
  

This series:

Part I--Blogging, social networking sites, schools, and risk for teen users
Part II -- Schools Banning Access and Banning Students' Online Presence
Part III--An Overblown Fear: The Internet Predator
Part IV--The Real Risk: Other Students' Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior (or the Poster's Own Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior)
Part V--The Benefits of Blogging, Personal and Educational
Part V--What Should Parents and Schools Do?

 

Technorati tags: myspace youth alienation cultureoffear

Comments

[liz]

Will Richardson posts a story today

Grieving at MySpace

This weekend, a very popular student at my school and her mother were tragically killed in a car accident. It's been a difficult few days for many in our community. The reason I mention it is that the student and many of her friends had sites at MySpace, and while hers has since been closed to public view, many of the other kids have been posting pictures and thoughts on their own sites in her memory. What's been striking to me is the scope of the outpouring online among these kids who are obviously making use of these sites to support each other and to grieve her passing. No doubt, as you scroll through many of these pages, you'll see troubling pictures and comments and links. But you'll also see a deeply connected community of kids, kids who are turning to these spaces to help each other cope and express their genuine feelings of sadness and confusion to one another."

Go read the
whole thing.

[Miriam]

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Miriam

http://www.craigslistdecoded.info

[Dorie]

that doesn't even make any sense!.
I am from Japan and also am speaking English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Canadian mind products java internet glossary - airline tickets."

With best wishes ;), Dorie.