Online networking: beginning in the classroom

In this paper, I will discuss how I fell accidentally, and rather absent-mindedly, into online networking in a classroom situation and as a classroom teacher, what I did, what my students now do, and the applications I use. I will touch on the staff /student divide – the native versus the immigrant debate. I will raise cyber bullying and other problems associated with my networking on students and staff and I will also share some of my successes and concerns. Finally, I hope to indicate ways forward and, by doing so, encourage a discussion and facilitate others to join in online networking.

Networking

We all do it – at parties, at political meetings, in subject associations and staff meetings and online. iNet is networking. We do it when we chat in the car to work. We even use ICT extensively. But, have we stepped back and considered that what we are doing, beyond the simple need to meet our commitments as teachers has a broader potential? The rather exciting world of online networking could be opening up.

I must admit that I was caught by surprise. I confess that much of the online networking I will discuss in this article came about accidentally. Like Alexander Graham Bell, I found that I was creating an even more exciting educational tool. I had good educational grounds for all that I did by introducing ICT applications relevant to networking to my history, English and ICT classes. However, only in the last six months have I recognised that I am in the centre of an online network.

What is this online networking in the classroom that I have created? Networking is providing the school community with an efficient way to exchange ideas and to learn collaboratively, by using ICT. The key is exchanging ideas and you will see that I have still a long way to go but now that I have recognised the potential of my work and the value of online networking my intention is to make it all more explicit.

Networking in the classroom offers the class teacher exciting possibilities. However, we need to be honest. Our students – native to this technology and its ways – are online networkers par excellence. They message, finger skilfully sms, maintain social network pages on YouTube and MySpace. They wake in the middle of the night and text their friends. Young people under-report cyber-bullying unfortunately, for the very fear of being disconnected from their networks. However, I would argue that they do it for social purposes. Online networking as ‘work’ is essentially alien to them.

Teachers of my generation (the baby boomers) are used to networking. Imagine a session of finger food with the ‘head hunters’? Yes, even I have had two such invitations in the past but distance precluded any attendance. We attend staff meetings and subject association meetings. We chat around a cup of tea. We write letters to our pen friends. But, as users of ICT, we are the immigrants tentatively placing toes in the water of electronic networking. This is the world where our students are the confident natives. How many teachers participate in iNet conferences? Or blog? Or podcast? Or construct websites? All these can enhance our teaching, engage students and they are the basics of online networking!

As I have already stated, despite having created an extensive website, a podcast and a number of blogs, I did not immediately recognise or understand the consequences of my work. When I began using computers in the classroom in the mid-1980s, as an English teacher, I was interested only in their use in publishing, that final stage in the writing process.

The next step required two years of one night a week of night school to get a Certificate of Art (Multi Media) and I began to design an English faculty website that took the school out into a wider community. I included pages on spelling, writing, reading and special projects with other schools conducted within our local cluster and between schools in Canada and England. While the front page is in desperate need of a redesign, because it has outgrown my original needs, it is the corner stone of the faculty’s networking with our school community. However, as a means of exchanging ideas it is very one way, with only email as the means of exchange.

I now place all my worksheets online. Pdf files are the way to go and Adobe Readers are readily available. This makes my worksheets available to parents and students and anyone else that passes by, including of course, other teachers (who have said nice things).

Without thinking of it, I had networked my class and work into a wider community. Again, it was still essentially one way. I had become a spider at the centre of a complex web but the exchange of ideas both ways was limited.

The next step came through iNet. I have established my most important online collaboration with a Canadian teacher. We have worked closely together on networking our students in various ‘newspaper’ projects for about four years. We have worked so closely that I now consider this teacher as a close personal friend. He has been the inspiration for much of what I have done and has been prepared to trial my podcasts and blog. Our projects have had mixed results. Some have worked but often the extra work and the north/south divide have worked against fully successful experiences. Our technology may also be a problem. To a native inhabitant of the ICT world, emails are so ‘last year’. But, here was a start to the exchange of ideas that is central to online networking.

All the work up to this point is pretty much what you would expect and you can see why I had not really recognised it as a network. That came with the establishment of blog sites and podcasts. These allow for the classic two-way communication of an online network. I conduct two types of blogs. I run a number of intranet blogs. I set up a central website and dictate the addresses. The students ensure that they have a correctly named file, in a correctly named folder, in their online sites folder. This demonstrates the correct protocols. I use the intranet for added privacy and security. My year 7 and year 9 and 10 students are writing such blogs. The year 7 and 9s are sharing their reading with the school and with each other. The year 9 and 10s are discussing their ICT projects and they are offering advice and encouragement to their classmates as they discuss each other’s projects, in an effort to promote collaborative learning. I use Dreamweaver for the web page design and the students are encouraged also to learn basic web design, to promote the sense of being creators, not just consumers.

For the staff, I have a blog run through edublogs.org. Like me, most of the staff are immigrants and can struggle with the concepts. This blog site is being used to get staff familiar with the world of their students and to raise key issues concerning the future planning for the faculty. Edublogs.org allows you to set up a blog as you know it. You moderate it yourself (which gives some security, as no comment is approved unless checked by the blog administrator, that is, you), it frees up space on your server and is available from anywhere in the world. Staff members are finding it challenging. We have found that a written record of our thoughts is useful.

My podcast, on podomatic.com, was initially intended for a chronically ill student who could attend perhaps one period in four. She accesses my podcasts from home. I reproduce my class on a digital recorder and upload to the site. I found that my early podcasts were stilted and rather embarrassing but if I write a script I am less hesitant. I am confident that she will pass the unit. The worksheets are online, she can have them delivered to school, she can listen to the podcasts at home and she is in class often enough to do simple but acceptable practical work.

A useful insight into the true value of my websites, blogs and podcasts, my online network limited in exchange of ideas, only came to me when a boy returned after four weeks absence. Instead of spending much time getting him up to scratch, I simply got him to listen to my podcasts after downloading his worksheets.

It was at this point that I appreciated that I had created a network. It had increased my efficiency and it included my worksheets, my blogs and my podcast. The applications reached out to my educational community and were beginning to facilitate an exchange of ideas.

There are problems that need to be confronted. I hope that they are only teething problems as I am only an immigrant in this world and still feeling my way among the native teenagers. However, I am determined to make my educational online network, this network that stretches so far beyond my classroom, relevant and effective in the collaborative learning of my students and my school community. I have come across the following ‘problems’.

• Some students are unwilling to use online technology for school. I feel that they cannot quite grasp that this ‘service’ is here. In their minds, teachers don’t produce online material, and so on.  After all, we are not native.
• Students, as natives, use online networking for social purposes. Networking, as work, is unfamiliar to them. It is an immigrant concept. It needs to be promoted explicitly. This issue can be seen in their choice of language, their frightening readiness to include personal details and some of their decoration that could be inappropriate in a work situation.
• Cyber bullying is possible and needs to be watched carefully and any transgressions dealt with according to school policy. This really concerns me because teachers are not particularly good at fighting ordinary bullying. Edublogs.org and the moderating email that arrives before any comments can be downloaded gives the teacher control. My web-based blogs need constant patrolling and if you are not up with the latest ‘gossip’, some issues may not be instantly recognised for what they are – cyber-bullying. Furthermore, some students understand criticism to mean going in cruelly. Positive criticism needs to be taught.
• Self-bullying, for want of a better term, can be prevalent. I have been appalled at the readiness of some students to publish self-loathing material. They need to be referred to the welfare staff. Some of what they write is very bleak and even frightening. This, I suspect is a hangover from some of the social networking pages where ‘insults’ and black thoughts may be a fashion! A correct work ethic needs to be taught explicitly.
• Online networking pre-supposes a high level of literacy. Struggling year 9 boys must feel further embarrassed and harassed as their very basic skills and lack of work are clearly to be seen by the entire network community.
• I have personally found podcasting embarrassing. It is surprising how self-conscious even a teacher of 40 years experience can feel in front of a microphone. I purchased a small digital recorder and script my podcasts. That adds time to the process. Your cat meowing in the background is a further problem.
• The successes are perhaps more subjective, as I am only into the early days of my online network. However, the two students already mentioned have certainly benefited. Parents are grateful that work sheets, especially spelling lists, can be accessed. They feel they can supervise at home and be more involved in their child’s work. More significantly, it is the quiet students who may be inheriting the Earth. I have found that it is the quietest students who are the most dynamic users of this networking. I have students who cannot be heard above a whisper in the standard classroom, but whose blogs are explosions of colour and shape and where they exchange informative and insightful comments. They write detailed blogs and experiment with font colour and backgrounds. They shout their ideas from the screen.

I had the privilege to spend a day at Melbourne High School, an elite state boys secondary school in Melbourne, Victoria, to investigate how they engaged boys through technology. This is another argument in favour of online networking – the engagement of boys. Melbourne High School used bulletin boards for their online projects. They discovered two groups who were to contribute greatly to the collaborative education of the other boys. The school discovered that the quiet boys now contributed to the collaborative learning to the approval of the other boys who appreciated the quality of what these boys had to say. They literally heard them for the first time. The school also discovered that boys who were always outside the square, whose thoughts were ‘way-out’ and ‘challenging’ found their voice accepted and highly regarded.

To conclude, it is obvious that I have a long way to go to get a fully functioning two-way exchange of ideas. I certainly see where my students are by logging onto their blogs. They can download worksheets and create their blogs and listen to my podcast. Staff can be involved in an ongoing faculty discussion on the blog that is promoting a dynamic exchange of ideas. My future plans include web-quests, year 9 story blogs and an ongoing determination to explicitly promote the value of online networking, especially in the creation of wikis linking a number of schools. I want to learn more about cyber-bullying. I have started on my voyage and I know many teachers are way ahead. I urge others to join – become less the immigrant and more the native. Happy networking!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Richard L. Opie is a classroom teacher at Warracknabeal Secondary College, in Warracknabeal, Victoria, Australia.

 

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