Blog Post 8

I enjoyed reading the article ''Safe' Social Networking Tailored for K-12 Schools' by Michelle R. Davis.  It was a really informative and helpful article about social networking sites that are made just for schools.  Up until now, I didn't realize that there were sites like this.  Davis stated in her article that 'social networking is playing an increasing role in education.'  I think this is a good thing because there are so many social networking sites out there that students currently use, so they are more likely to be engaged in their schoolwork if they are doing it via a school social networking site.   A few of the sites that Davis referenced were eChalk, Edmodo, ePals, Gaggle, JAM, and Livemocha.  All of these sites sound great considering that none of them collect student information to pass on to advertisers.  

There are a ton of ways that I could use educational social networking sites in my classroom.  I really like the example at the beginning of the article that described how teacher Robert Miller used one of these sites in his 5th grade classroom.  He used it to communicate with students as historical figures, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and get them to give the historical figures advice.  I would love to do an activity like this with my students as well.  I would also like for this site to serve as a discussion board for students that need help with their homework.  I would encourage them to discuss their answers and help others.  And since I can monitor everything they are saying, I can make sure no one is cheating.  for the younger aged students, I could post videos on the site that introduce a new subject or further inform on a current subject, and the students can practice their typing and sentence forming skills by writing about what they saw in the video.  These sites are also not limited to one subject.  A teacher could use social networking sites for ANY subject.  That is what makes it so appealing to me.  The only downfall is that these sites cost money.   There are a lot of schools/ school districts that don't have extra money to spend on a year subscription for a full classroom (or multiple classrooms).  I hope that the school I teach at one day will be able to fund educational social networking.