Social Networking and Social Bookmarking: Instruction and Educational Learning Experiences

Incorporating social networking into my instruction began earlier this year. My undergraduate education brought me to Holy Names University in Oakland, CA. There I met Carmine Oceguera. We have rekindled a friendship through Facebook. We now share poetry lessons with each other. She teaches English at a private school in Hawaii. If that doesn't close a gap regarding global teaching - reaching far and wide, I don't know what does. My only obstacle is that I have to transfer Facebook posts to my website at home because Facebook is blocked by the filters within my district.

I recently received approval from my principal to provide the National Spelling Bee pre-qualifier round at my middle school via SKYPE. My technology contact has a school SKYPE account. We tested the application with my student who was traveling during the qualifying round. His parents were so gratified that we would accommodate their only family vacation and a work-around for their son to participate. Unfortunately the snow cancellations put a damper on our Bee rounds; it was set and ready to go. My student flew home to be with us in person, as we rescheduled the schoolwide pre-qualifying session. I was ready!

My administration is on board with social networking. My vice principal recently encouraged those of us who have iPhones to download a music synthesizer app. He illustrated the benefit of putting some of our "memorization" rules to music for students and post them as audio files to our websites. This is a super idea. We now have to lift the ban on cell phones to make this happen within the school!

Incorporating social bookmarking into my instruction and my students' learning experiences has begun with the exploration: posting and borrowing of bookmarks using Yahoo's http://www.delicious.com bookmarking site. Because this site allows educators to sort bookmarks by subject and topic, this becomes an excellent source for a school to collaborate and share individual teacher website "hotlists." Teachers who post exemplar sites for each other, sharing what works for the benefit of students, really are operating within the premise of professional learning communities. Save a teacher, borrow a lesson!

Edutopia (The web publication published by the George Lucas Eduational Foundation) recently posted an article to my facebook feed: Making the Case for Social Media in Education,

http://www.edutopia.org/social-media-case-education-edchat-steve-johnson?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=makingthecaseforsocialmedia
The basic premise: it is becoming our duty as educators to guide our students in and with the responsible use of social networking. We have had much discussion and training regarding cyber-bullying. Zero tolerance is something we are managing in our school by encouraging students to report others they note on MySpace and Facebook who participate in on-line chat bullying. Raising our millenials to be responsible citizens in the age of Web 2.0 is our only option if we are to engage them at their interest level.

Larissa Opramolla, a high school math educator and myself, collaborated in discussion about the many benefits of incorporating both networking and bookmarking into our practices. GoogleChat and Yahoo Instant Messenger allowed us to discuss the benefits of these web 2.0 forums for ourselves and for our students in an on-online discussion. I've added Classroom 2.0 to my "hotlist" of favorites. I established an account linked to my blog and my school website. I feel very web 2.0-ish in that I am waiting for the administrators to approve my application!

Please visit http://www.rsd17.org/; scroll down to team 8-1 and click on our classroom. We are doing our best to integrate technology into traditional learning in classroom 113 at HKMS!