MySpace: Good for Your Students!

We are strong advocates of using the real world to enhance classroom learning, so we've been dismayed by schools' blocking access to social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. (The web IS the real world now.) Education Week's online edition (requires free registration) reports on a study by the National School Boards Association that shows....well, we'll let you read it for yourself. The first few paragraphs are below; click the title to read the entire article. I've put a few things in boldface type, 'cuz I didn't want y'all to miss 'em!

At least half the adolescents who exchange messages for hours with their friends online or by cellphone spend part of the time discussing their schoolwork, a new study shows.

An online survey of 1,277 9- to 17-year-olds found that 50 percent said they talk specifically about their schoolwork when they text-message by cellphone, or use their computers to instant-message, blog, or visit social-connection sites such as Facebook. Nearly six in 10 said they discuss education-related topics, including college or college planning, careers, and jobs.

The survey, commissioned by the Alexandria, Va.-based National School Boards Association and released today, showed that 96 percent of adolescents with access to cellphones and Internet-capable computers use them to build and maintain social networks.

NSBA leaders believe those numbers must point the way for educators. Social-networking technologies are so popular and offer such promise for education that district and school officials would be remiss not to adapt them for the classroom, they said.

“When it’s another generation’s technology, it’s easy to be uncomfortable with it and say we don’t need it,” said Ann Flynn, the NSBA’s director of educational technology. “We want to say to people, explore these things. Figure out what kinds of tools they are. By no means are we saying people shouldn’t be safe. But we also don’t want to see policies that are so restrictive that the unintended consequence is to keep the technology out of the hands of educators.”

The NSBA’s report urges school board members to “find ways to harness the educational value” of social networking, such as setting up chat rooms or online journals that allow students to talk about and collaborate on their classwork. Boards should also do everything possible to ensure that all students have access to the Internet, the group says.

The report also tells school boards to re-evaluate policies that ban or tightly restrict the use of the Internet or social-networking sites. Findings from the survey, NSBA officials said, suggest that parents’ and educators’ perceptions of the dangers of online stalking and bullying—fears that fuel such restrictions—could be overblown.

Seven percent of adolescents responding to the survey said they had been bullied on social-networking sites, and fewer than 3 percent said unwelcome strangers had tried repeatedly to connect with them online. Two percent said that someone they met online had tried to meet them in person, and only .08 percent said they had gotten together with someone they met online without their parents’ permission. An online parent survey on those issues, part of the same study, backs up the adolescents’ accounts.

“The vast majority of students, then, seem to be living by the online-safety behaviors they learn at home and at school,” the report says. “School district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report.”