Social Bookmarking and Social Networking
Before this assignment I honestly had no idea what social bookmarking was. I had never heard of the majority of the websites mentioned in the articles either until this class. Now, I have become fascinated by the online world and have been spending a great deal of time thinking about how I am going to apply it into my current teaching. (Richardson may have sold me on Twitter- but I don’t think I need another thing online to distract me from my work.) There are so many new ways to accomplish things with digital technology. (Alvermann, 2008) When students are on homebound they often receive no interaction from their peers and their teachers just send packets of work with no real explanation or meaning. These readings sparked a number of ideas I am going to incorporate into their lessons soon. Greenhow’s article provided me with resources to start using social bookmarking websites for research. I thought it’d be really great to incorporate into a Social Studies classroom. I’ll be checking out Delicious and Diigo when I get some free time.
Alvermann answers a number of really important questions in her article. “…literacies so powerfully motivating that young people are more and more willing to invest a substantial amount of time and effort in creating content to share with others online” (Alvermann, 2008) Social networking plays such a big role in the lives of adolescents and their engagement is high. As educators, because they have such a high interest in 21st century literacy practices, we need to bring that into the classroom to help students acquire the skills they will need to enter into the technological world. Students are creating, editing, and publishing in an online context. With Social bookmarking, students have the ability to collaborate and share in the research process. (Greenhow, 2009) They’re acquiring and using a number of skills without being in the classroom! Moreover, they have an audience for their writing which makes it a powerful tool. Through one of my other readings, Williams, 2008, I found this website http://www.space2cre8.com/. When you choose an account type you can be the teacher, student, or mentor. I think it’d be an interesting website to learn more about. In my opinion, something like this would be a more appropriate classroom social networking tool because of all of the issues surrounding websites like Facebook. I know Richardson gives ideas for using Facebook in the classroom and backs it up with examples of success, but I am just not sold.
On a last note, Alvermann talks about opposition from teachers but I think using these tools is really a gift. Is there such thing as too much time reading and writing?
I agree with you that I hardly need any more online technologies to distract me from the ones I'm already involved with. As a homebound teacher, I think its smart that you understand your students' need to interact with their peers, especially since they aren't in school. Some of the teachers that do complain about the use of technology in the classroom find it hard to see the technologies as aides, mostly because they aren't educated enough about them. I think that we are way ahead of the game in that we are learning to embrace technology (since it isn't going away anytime soon). Great insight Michelle!
ReplyDeleteI think Kallie’s got this one covered. Michelle, I love your last line here. “These tools are really a gift.”
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