Students and blogs
February 12, 2010
Rather than make sweeping generalisations about the internet habits of my students I decided to actually ask them. I made a questionnaire about their online activities-what do they do? where do they go? do they participate? The profile of these students are- Spanish, upper teens, high level of English. Responses were more or less uniform among them.
As I suspected, the number one internet site was Facebook (followed by Facebook, Facebook and Facebook). Farmville, a game on Facebook got a big thumbs up. In general I found-
- Average time on the net- 3 hours per day.
- Most popular site Facebook, surprise, surprise.
- A lot of IM
- Youtube
- Their school home page
- Some students look at Wikipedia periodically although schools advise against it.
- No one shopped online.
- None of them used Twitter.
- Some of them had photologs.
- Only one girl had blogged, a week long creative writing project at school designed specifically to give her experience of blogging.
- No one participated in any online forums.
- Only one girl knew what a wiki was, although it was difficult for her to explain the difference between a blog and a wiki.
- Some of them use Skype to keep in touch with family outside of Spain.
- Some of them streamed football matches/TV
- All of them had emails although some didn’t use them often as they prefered to keep in touch by, guess what, Facebook!
Students are different all over the world but for me this fits with city centre students using the net more for socialising.
They are an exam class. I have decided to start a wiki with them. I explained what a wiki was and why we would use it and what we were going to do with it. They seemed ok with that. We started it last night. We’ll see how it goes.
Suzanne Naylor's Blog 
That’s very interesting – thanks for doing that Suzanne!
Schools banning Wikipedia – personally, I think it’s completely wrong-headed. (But he would say that, I hear you say!) I think explaining how Wikipedia works offers one of the best opportunities to build critical thinking skills. But we’ll deal more with that next week…
The prevalence of Facebook – it’s not a surprise. However, Danah Boyd has written recently about the encroaching of parents and teachers into students ‘own’ spaces on Facebook, with the result that many are now starting to abandon it in favour of things like Twitter. (This is in the U.S.) Still, Facebook continues to grow – I was surprised to read recently that its userbase is still rising exponentially.
And interesting you’re using a wiki. (What software/host, incidentally?) Keep us posted!
Hi Cormac, thanks for the comment
I think the thing about Facebook is it is pretty universal and is a social site for all age groups not just “the young”. There are a lot of people my age on Facebook (40) and that number is growing. Only in the last week two old friends started in Facebook and I was contacted by an old university friend I haven’t seen in 20 years. Maybe that’s where the growth is? In Spain the education system is not very technologically advanced (unlike the U.S)and as far as I know, there are no inroads into Facebook by schools. So Facebook continues to be important to young learners here.
It’s true though, as soon as schools (i.e. authority) try to “get with the kids”- and reach them through say Facebook- it is then usually time for those “kids” to move on, abandon ship and move to “the next big thing”. I would have done exactly the same in my teens..there are no suprises there. I don’t think parents and teachers should try to harness Facebook, I don’t know what’s wrong with giving teens some space. I have to question the almost compulsive need (some) educators and parents have in the developed world to stamp “formal education” on almost every experience students have.
But that’s just my opinion.
ps.. wetpaint for my wiki, more of in another post.
Yes… though I wonder if there are ways of asking students to enhance their learning through the spaces that they use anyway? Sure, Facebook has to be fun for them, but maybe there’s a way to make learning less of a chore, or less disconnected from their lives? I suppose the problem here is, if we ask students to do this, do we monitor that activity, and if so, would this add to the encroaching/formalising push that you highlight? This kind of surveillance is something that social networking technology affords, and which was not present before…
Good point..I wonder though just how much formal learning has to push into other areas of life for it to be effective. From a work sense, before technology became important in my job I had my teaching/preparation hours and that was that. It was all very clear. Now a lot more is demanded of me in my own time..and I am reachable everywhere..the lines of home / work get blurred. I haven’t made up my mind yet if that is a good thing for me or not. If I feel that way, I wonder how my students feel about school extending its boundaries into their personal free time activities.
I found an interesting article today about the demise of Myspace.. The moment Murdoch bought Myspace it became seriously uncool and it is a good analogy of a dictatorial business model (school/authority)invading a site and killing it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/feb/14/myspace-news-corporation-owen-van-natta
You’re right that the lines are blurring – I wonder, though, if it’s something that we’ll simply get used to? I don’t like to make assumptions about the ‘Net Generation’ and all that, but I think that as blurred lines – between friends, family, work, play – become an increasing part of life, people will lessen expectations that particular spaces should be for one thing only. (Though I wonder does that mean school, reciprocally, has to also give some leeway…?)
I definitely think school would have to give some leeway..the case for using social networking in education, there is an interesting article here, but I am still not convinced!
http://www.boxoftricks.net/?p=1727