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Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, Ning: How do we help our students learn the social skills needed to understand what it really means to live and participate in a global community? How do we incorporate this into our schools and classrooms? How do we keep ourselves and our students safe?
Social networking sites are mainstream media for many tweens, teens, and adults. There are even social networking sites that attract kids as young as 5 years old. This is the reality of the world we live in, and schools should reflect this reality. We need to help students become effective communicators, offline as well as online.
AT THE YOUNGER END, SAFETY IN NUMBERS
For students in grades K- 3, find ways to use online social networking tools with the entire class. Pair up with another school. Together as a class, post online messages that students in the other school respond to. For very young students, try a network such as VoiceThread, which uses recorded messages rather than typed ones. By second grade, you can move to blog or wiki sites that are text-based. Encourage parents to read what has been posted too. Have class discussions about social networking. Students even as young as kindergarten have heard of Facebook and Twitter, so seize this opportunity to talk about what these sites are and how they are similar to what you are doing in class. Discuss what is good to post online and what should only be shared with people the students know in person.
By upper elementary, students are ready to have individual accounts. A great way to start is to post "thinking questions" students can respond to in a social networking format. Remember to give students guidelines on ways they can respond. For example, they should not just say that they agree with what a certain student said. They should be specific and say what they agree with and why. Use specific examples in class of good posts and not-so-good posts.
As students become more confident using a social network to interact with each other, branch out and create a social network for kids from several classes, even moving outside of the school into networks where kids from several schools can communicate. Here are some things...