Journal 1

Social Networking for the K-12 Set. Jim Klein

Klein discusses how educators are continually trying to eliminate social and geographic boundaries, which prevent communication and collaboration. He would like to use technology to meet these ever-challenging goals. He says that by the time educators come up with new ideas about how to use technology and disseminate those, most of the ideas are outdated and irrelevant. He discusses how community sites or as he calls them, “learning landscapes” are emerging as an optimal vehicle to bridge the social and geographic boundaries. He suggests creating a site, which can be accessed only by the school district employees and students. There would be access controls on this site, which would require student posts and comments to be first reviewed by a teacher. The site would contain user profiles with basic information about employees and students; blogging tools; secure file storage and sharing; and RSS and podcasting. He has successfully designed a site, which now engages 350 teachers and 450 students online. They are seeing a nine-point gain in test scores and higher student achievement in writing and language fluency.

1. What basic information about employees and students would be available on a site?
Students and staff could share information about like interests, new ideas, questions about lessons and student projects. All student information would have to be approved before it could be posted on a site. Only the individual staff member would be allowed to share any info about them. Privacy protection is important.

2. How would a site like this benefit students in any classroom?Students could work on team projects from science to literature. They could use the Internet to research a subject and then use a web-based word processing program to jointly write a paper. The whole project could the