Social networks in educational settings
An online social network allows users to construct and typically share a profile (information about themselves), designate a list or lists of others with which a users shares a connection, and use this list to communicate and share content (boyd & Ellison, 2007). There are many sites that satisfy these conditions with Facebook and Twitter among the most widely used examples. Adolescents make heavy use of social networking sites. Recent data indicate that 73% of 12-17 year-olds had used a social network site and surprisingly 55% of 12-13 year-olds had accounts. What is surprising about the level of participation of the youngest group is that the participation of this age group is actively discouraged on the open access social sites. The trend across the years leading to the date these data were collected would predict that by now the level of involvement is even greater (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zickuhr, 2010).
What you as a future or practicing educator should recognize is that while many adults and students make heavy use of social networking, many schools actively discourage the use of social networking sites within the school. Schools may actively block access to social networking sites and often have policies that discourage educators from accepting student invitations to participate in the same network. The core concern might be described as the potential for the inadvertent sharing of content that is inappropriate or at least what some might label as questionable. It seems that the barriers that separate the different groups to which we belong are easier to maintain in our face-to-face lives than online or at least we are more aware of such groups as we make decisions about what behaviors are appropriate in any given context.
The social networking site Twitter makes a good example. If you search Twitter for “grabe” (our last name), you will be able to locate one of us among others who decided to use “grabe” as part of their Twitter usernames. You are not likely among the group who typically follow the grabe tweets, but it is possible to search and find the content associated with the “grabe” profile. So, Twitter is public at a basic level even though it incorporates self-defined “followers”. Understanding this reality is important and should be considered when using social service. Teachers should not tweet messages they would not want students or parents to read.
Facebook is probably even more notorious for unintended sharing of content not so much because content is public, but because users either do not bother to limit or do not understand how to limit who sees the content that has been added. The common example seems to be that of a future teachers sharing party photos intending these images to be viewed by friends but not understanding the same images might be available to potential future employers.
Online social networking sites would not be so popular if the sites did not do such a great job of making it easy for people to communicate with each other. For those of us interested in educational applications, the challenge is finding a way to make use of social networking sites in ways that allow a tolerable level of risk. You may object to our use of the qualifier “tolerable” in describing risks, but it is our way of acknowledging that once you share something online it is always possible that this content may be viewed by someone you did not assume could see. We believe this is the most honest and accurate position to take. We do believe that an understanding of how social networking systems work and the use of social networking tools designed to control access to posted content can satisfy the standard of a “tolerable” level of risk.