More than talking: Using social networks in an elementary classroom

In order to affect real change in schools, and truly educate students, we have to move beyond the clichés of the “21st Century Learner” and begin to teach students to use specific strategies that can actually produce the skills needed to survive in the emerging global society. The hard part about this transition is choosing the tools and strategies to make this happen. Two of the most important skills for success in our constantly connected world are the ability to communicate in writing and the ability to collaborate with others (Wagner, 2008). Given the need to collaborate and communicate while staying connected, teaching kids to integrate aspects of cooperative learning within the use of social networks is a smart choice to create successful learners in the 21st century.

Cooperative Learning and Social Networking

Since the days of the Greek philosophers, people have known that learning is a social phenomenon.  Conversely, in schools during the past 100 years, learning has often been treated as an isolated skill set, despite the research saying the opposite. The classroom’s very design “assumes that the significant part of a student’s learning occurs in the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student in a somewhat linear fashion” (Nair, 2009, p. 25).   This method assumes that knowledge acquisition is essentially a solo act.  However, according to Vygotsky, "every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people...and then inside the child" (1978, p. 57).  Viewing learning as a process where the learner is influenced by those around him means that an individual cannot learn as much on his own as he can within a group who can add to and influence his conceptualizations (Frey, 2009, p. 14).  Therefore, to truly provide a student with an education means that he will have to interact constructively with other students. Cooperative Learning, when done right, provides the educational setting where this type of group interaction can happen.  Bringing cooperative learning into the 21^st century, social networks provide students a space online where they can work together to share their knowledge, help one another grow as learners, and solve problems together.  As Baird and Fisher (2006) state, “Social networking media engages the user in the content and allows them to be included as an active participant as they construct a learning landscape rooted in social interaction, knowledge exchange, and optimum cognitive development with peers” (p. 24).  If we really want students to learn how to work together, we have to teach them how to interact.  We cannot just put them online and expect them to interact successfully with no scaffolding or practice.  Integrating cooperative learning into social networking can provide this.  For this to happen, a definition of cooperative learning and social networking must be established. 

Cooperative learning is a way of organizing the instruction of the classroom such that students are working in small, heterogeneous groups (Wong, 1998 p. 245).  The groups are tasked with working on activities together rather than alone.  According to Kagan, for cooperative learning to happen successfully, four specific criteria must be met: Positive Interdependence, Individual Accountability, Equal Participation, and Simultaneous Interaction (Kagan, 2009 p.4.2).   When these four principles are adhered to on a regular basis, student learning will increase.  This is proven through a meta-analysis done by Marzano (2001, p. 86).  This research proves that cooperative learning is effective in raising students’ test scores, but cooperative learning does more than that.  It goes beyond the stated curriculum to affect the teacher’s hidden curriculum of social norms.  Through the principles of Positive Interdependence and Equal Participation as championed by Kagan, cooperative learning requires students to interact with each other in prescribed ways that often mimic the ways that adults work collaboratively in their own situations.  Among these interactions are such processes as “the ability to resolve conflicts in a constructive manner, to communicate effectively, and to ably draw upon the strengths of others to solve problems” (Frey, 2009, p. 18).  These are some of the same skills often touted as “21^st Century” though they have been in practice since people first began to interact with one another. 

Social networking, on the other hand, is a new, yet almost ubiquitous feature of life in the 21^st century.  When asked, most people would define a social network by simply naming one: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.  But to truly define a social network takes more than a simple example.  According to boyd (2007), a social network can be defined by the features it provides: “profiles, public testimonials or comments, and a publicly articulated, transversable list of friends,” (p. 4).  Finding social networks for use within an elementary school setting can be tricky because public social networks have an age requirement of 13 years old.  However, there are some pseudo-social networks that exist to create a safe, internal network for students to use in a school setting.  One such site is Edmodo (www.edmodo.com).  According to Stroud (2010), “Edmodo creates an online environment for teachers and students to stay connected in an educational setting” (p. 2).  For the purposes of this paper, Edmodo will be the system described and used.  Edmodo provides two of the three features listed by boyd: profiles and public comments by friends.  Edmodo does not have a public “friends” list on student profiles, though it does allow teachers to have “connections” which operate in the same fashion.  It also allows for posting of documents, files, assignments, links, etc. – both by the teacher and by the students.  And because students can communicate with each other through the system without the direct mediation of a teacher, it fits the overall definition of a social network.

As stated before, students have to have practice using technology in general, and in particular the specific social network, in order for them to use it comfortably and therefore be able to contribute to conversations (Lankes, 2008).   In our situation, we provided several opportunities for students to explore the system.  These included completing a scavenger hunt with a partner within Edmodo, personalizing their own profile including their avatar, and completing simple assignments that would earn them online “badges” within the system.  Beyond mere practice, we want to merge cooperative learning with a social network to create a situation where students are being self-regulated learners as well as participating in online cooperative groups as they read, think, and respond to what they are reading in our reading/social studies block. As teachers know, students often label many of the academic interactions they have during a day as boring.  As Sheskey (2010) noted, “one of the common causes of boredom in the classroom is students’ perception that the methods of how they curriculum is delivered to them is irrelevant to the how they learn,” (p.199). Because we know that using social networks provide, “greater engagement, greater interest, [and] students taking more control and responsibility for their education,” (Blankenship, 2011, p. 40) we want to give students the opportunity to move their thinking from their hardcopy reading journals into an online forum where they are not only required to post, but are also required to respond to each other, hopefully alleviating some of the perceived boredom.  Taking note of Sheskey (2010), we have used Edmodo to create online spaces “for collaborative learning and information sharing,” (p. 203) using driving questions and providing links where students can read and research.  The students are placed into small groups where they are expected to post the responses to what they are reading at least twice per week.  They are also expected to circle back and respond to their peers’ thoughts at least twice a week.  We also try to bring some of what we see transpiring online back to our offline discussions as we teach students how to not only use reading strategies but how to appropriately respond to others’ thinking – the essence of cooperation.  We hope that by having students respond and judge one another’s work we can also help them be more metacognitive about the “self-reflection phase” of self-regulation advocated by Zimmerman (2002).  We believe this is important because interacting online with students – and having them interact with each other – is an effective way for teachers to connect with them (Sheskey 2010).  Though we have only been up and running in this experiment for about four weeks, we have anecdotally noticed that Blankenship (2011) is correct; our students are more engaged and showing greater interest in their participation.  We have also noted that many students are taking their jobs seriously as they respond to their peers.  The next step is for us to use the responses to help individuals reflect on their own work to then be able to use that knowledge to set goals and plan for their next post (Zimmerman, 2002).

By setting up situations such as this in the classroom – situations that necessitate online cooperative group interaction – successful teachers will not only increase student engagement and interest but also have a concrete way to teach students the elusive “21^st Century” skills that have been discussed ad nauseum in key-note addresses and book abstracts for the past decade.

References

Baird, D. & Fisher, M. (2006). Neomillennial User Experience Design Strategies: Utilizing Social Networking Media to Support 'Always On' Learning Styles. Journal of Education Technology Systems. Volume 34, Number 1. White Plains, NY: Baywood Publishing. 

Blankenship, M. (2011). How social media can and should impact higher education. Education Digest, 76(7), 39-42.

boyd, danah. (2007) Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. In Buckingham, D. (Ed.) MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Frey, N., Fisher, D., Everlove, S. (2009). Productive group work: How to engage students, build teamwork, and promote understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Kagan, S. & Kagan, M. (2009). Kagan Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing.

Lankes, R. D. (2008).  Trusting the Internet: New Approaches to Credibility Tools. In Metzger, M.J, and Flanagin, A. J. (Eds.) Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Nair, P., Fielding, R., & Lackney, J (2009). The language of school design: Design patterns for 21^st century schools. USA: Designshare.com.

Sheskey, B. (2010). Creating learning connections with today’s tech-savvy student. In Jacobs, H. H. (Ed.), Curriculum 21: Essential education for a changing world. (pp. 195-209). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Stroud, C. (2010). Edmodo: A white paper. Retrieved from http://coe.winthrop.edu/jonesmg/LTI/2010Fwhitepapers/Casey_Stroud.pdf

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap: Why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need – and what we can do about it. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wong, H. K. & Wong, R. T. (1998). The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher. Mountain View, CA: Harry K. Wong Publications.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Achieving self-regulation: The trials and triumphs of adolescence. In Academic Motivation

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