This chapter on social networking was probably the least useful so far from an educational standpoint. We all know that we will never have access to Facebook in our schools and there are so many other tools out there it's easier to stay away from Facebook. Our students love Facebook and probably use it more often than phones to make connections. The author suggests that teachers use socal networking sites to promote cooperation and collaboration among our peers. He commments that learning has traditionally taken a winner-take-all competitive form rather than a cooperative form. I think that teachers are starting to become more open to sharing and cooperating in recent years than they have in the past. Maybe technology has something to do with this?
I read the section about NING thinking that it would have less drawbacks than Facebook but it really sounds the same. There is just to much risk in creating one of these sites and the monitoring of it would be really time consuming. The comment that really scared me was when he warns against pressing the "add apps" button! I'm guessing that all sorts of inappropriate content would be accessed and that would be hard to control. I think the only real need for a social network for educational purposes was like the case of theSan Antonio school whose students wanted to share experiences but were geographically challenged. In that case I think it would be better to use Blackboard or some other protected site. The social network is too difficult to police in an educational setting even though our students love it.
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