I attended a panel today that claimed to be about social networking and education, but as tends to be all the educational conference rage, it was mostly about the dark side of what kids can do on MySpace and the adult-centric response (including what the adults at MySpace are doing to keep all the other adults happy).

It's depressing to hear educators talk about students only in terms of their deficits. This conversation focused on filtering, blocking, policies, discipline; the only mention of curriculum integration was "teaching internet safety" -- which sounded, to me, like one way transmission of information from adult "experts" on what they consider "appropriate use" to students whose ideas are invalid. Why are we ignoring the evidence about social context and learning? And refusing to consider whether students are capable of positive online behavior or interested in collaborative learning?

The two saddest things I heard were the student representative on the panel suggesting that punishment is the most effective way to teach students online safety (if you take it away from us, we'll learn our lesson)!! And that Myspace allows parents to request that Myspace delete their kids' accounts, without even having the kid involved in the decision.

I had a moment of optimism when one panelist started saying, "there are good, intelligent, effective..." and I thought he was going to say "online communities for youth" but no. That sentence finished with "ways to block sites."

The panel identified the following challenges/threats posed by social networking sites:
-online predators are going to get into students' heads and manipulate them
-we need to protect students from themselves
-internet threats are different from real world threats because you have a false sense of security
-kids just don't understand what is safe

Not only was there no significant evidence offered to support any of these claims, but no one seemed to consider how incongruent these generalizations are with 21st Century Skills. Statements like these assume that kids aren't capable of media literacy, critical thinking, cross-cultural understanding, social responsibility, etc. And worse, it sends the message that there is no knowledge to be constructed or meaning to be made from the way young people use technology. So just shut it off. Game over.

When asked about the potential benefits, one person said:
"I haven't seen it, but some people are saying that there could be benefits of students blogging"

You think?

The silver lining to this forum was that, finally, the panelist from Chicago Public Schools pointed out that there ARE opportunities to leverage social networking tools and digital media for improving learning, but we as educators have to make those connections. I happily approached her afterwards to ask if she had heard of TIG (yes, thanks to a past presentation at NECC) and after talking for a while I had met two innovative educators with great ideas that I hope they will bring to TIGed's community.

But don't tell anyone I was social networking.