Social Media in Schools

I recently read an article entitled “The Case for Social Media in Schools.” I found this piece to be particularly interesting because it presents a social media program, which was implemented in Portland, Oregon, that positively impacted education through the incorporation of technology within the classroom setting. Through the incorporation of technologies, such as blogging and cell phones, within the classroom, grades went up 50% and absenteeism went down by over a third.  

The article introduces a site entitled “kidblog.org” which I feel would be extremely useful in the classroom setting because it allows students to work collaboratively in a safe and secure social network. I thought it was interesting that this site allows educators to monitor all student submissions before they were posted online, thus ensuring student safety. The site primarily aims to replace online procrastination with social education. Even as a college student, I find myself procrastinating through online sites such as facebook or twitter, so I feel that this aim is crucial to student success. While I find blogging sites to be useful in engaging and connecting students through technology, I worry that an overabundance of blog posting requirements within the classroom could make it a tedious task for students. It would certainly be a challenge to ensure that students remain engaged in the act of blogging as the year progresses.

Another site mentioned in the article that I found appealing was entitled “Edmodo.” This site allows students to collaborate on projects and share files as well as ideas. It also allows students access through their mobile devices for messaging and the like. The author of the article argues that this site can be used to enhance social connections between students however, a study conducted by Rochester Institute of Technology found this was not the case. I would be interested to observe whether social technologies do truly allow students who typically would not interact in the classroom setting to connect online. I feel as though they would, and thus disagree with the findings of RIT’s study; however, I could stand to be corrected.

The portion of the article, which most surprised me, detailed the collection of students’ cell phone numbers for the purposes of sending alerts as well as wake-up messages to awaken students who were chronically late. This text message initiative was entitled “Texts on Time,” and it improved absenteeism by 35%. I do not doubt the effectiveness of this program, however I wonder if it is truly effective to use technology for this purpose. I feel that students need to be held accountable for upholding their responsibilities, such as waking up and getting to school on time. I feel that incorporating technology within schools in this manner may make students reliant on it and less accountable since the technology is enabling them to not to take responsibility for their actions. Despite this, I feel that it is a good idea to embrace technologies such as cell phones and social networking sites within the classroom to bolster student learning.