Social and Collaborative Media:

Social and Collaborative Media:
Tools and Strategies for the School Library Media Specialist

As a school library media specialist striving to become a “21st Century literate educator”, teaching media literacy and the effective use of technology is a key goal. According to The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education:
Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms. This expanded conceptualization of literacy responds to the demands of cultural participation in the twenty-first century.
Learning has shifted from the top-down authority driven model I knew to a collaborative one. To become effective collaborators, students transform from consumers of information to evaluators and creators: communication and ethical use of information is critical. We will explore the ways Social and Collaborative Media Tools engage students, encourage media literacy skills and perform academic functions.

A key media literacy task is for students to research on the Internet (access). Under the traditional model, students individually gather facts and compile them into a paper or project, engendering little thought and interaction. Social and collaborative media tools allow for more interaction during this process. The teacher-librarian may still lay the groundwork for the research by establishing guidelines, finding resources and organizing links, using social media to create a home base. Home-base could be a custom I-Google or Pageflakes page, containing customized tabs, a dictionary, assignments, guidelines for finding and evaluating appropriate resources, bookmarks and links to a class blog or wiki.. These pages are free, accessible, can be viewed by parents and easily updated by the teacher-librarian.

A more interactive home-base option is a social bookmarking site such as Ning, Delicious, or Diigo. These pages are more social, community property—the teacher is the overseer, but students are given the power to add their own resources and commentary. Ning offers practical features such “as personal profile pages, chat capabilities, and the ability to connect with other members.” In “Ning and Writing to Learn”, Nathalie Ettzevoglou and Jessica McBride comment on the educational benefits of Ning:
On Ning postings completed outside of class, students wrote in first person, expressed opinions, and critiqued each other rather than analyzing the work of literature or film we were discussing in class at the time. This style of writing calls for cohesive, convincing, succinct expression of ideas in a short paragraph.
This fosters writing and critical thinking skills and collaboration—information is not poured into a student, but created by the student in concert with others, befitting the goal of “cultural participation in the twenty-first century”. In addition, social bookmarking sites are transparent, allowing parents, administrators and colleagues to monitor the assignment.




In my short tenure in a high school media center, I have been horrified to see how many teachers plunk their students on the Internet, ask them to create a PowerPoint, and look the other way while they cut and paste from Wikipedia, finishing with pictures from Google Image. There is a better way. According to Joyce Valenza social and collaborative technologies such as Facebook engage students and increase learning:
Any technology that is able to captivate so many students for so much time not only carries implications for how those students view the world but also offers an opportunity for educators to understand the elements of social networking that students find so compelling and to incorporate those elements into teaching and learning.

The 21st Century research alternative means the teacher librarian will be involved in the information gathering process: collecting information in a social bookmarking site or a social networking site (a blog, wiki, Twitter or Facebook account), commenting, evaluating, prodding students to look harder, think more: modeling these skills for the class. Social bookmarking and networking tools allow students to post links to research, including a summary and evaluation, inviting classmates to also evaluate those sources and commentary. This gives the class (with guidance from the teacher-librarian) an active role in deciding what information is appropriate, reliable and relevant. It also forces students to move away from cutting and pasting toward reading and thinking.

However, according to “How did a couple of veteran classroom teachers end up in a space like this?”, the danger is that many teachers use social networking tools to complete traditional teacher-centered assignments:
Ignoring the transformative capabilities of connectivity, some teachers using blogs merely reproduce offline practices online. Limiting classroom blogging to one-way transactions of information and directives from teachers to learners may add convenience and efficiency to the classroom, but does nothing for learning itself.
For learners to benefit from social networking, they need a more interactive role in creating knowledge. Another plus is that Blogs and other social networking tools can be kept private to protect students, and the super-conservative CCPS actually allows blogging so I can begin implementing blogging now.

Another excellent social media research tool is Skype. This online creation of a face-to-face meeting allows students anywhere to connect with authors, scientists, experts in a field or foreign language speakers. The technology requirements are minimal: an inexpensive microphone and web cam. As Sarah Chauncey points out in “Skype an Author Interview”, Skyping allows for no-cost or low-cost meetings with experts in a given field . Rather than passively watching a video clip, student and presenter interact. Because the online meeting is pre-arranged, students prepare research and questions in advance. According to Chauncey, skyping is “so close to having the author here in the room with us, and in some ways it’s a little more exciting because it is a little more mysterious to children…engaging… allow[ing] students to move outside the walls of the school.” We forget that some of our students have limited contact with the world beyond their school or home; a Skype visit can bring that world into the classroom, bringing valuable information in an engaging format .

After students use social networking to gather information, then we ask them to synthesize what they have learned and share it. This phase can also be transformed by 21st century technologies. Students can post their ideas, questions, drafts and final product to a class blog using Blogger, WordPress or a Wiki. The final product might be a traditional report; however, students can also create audio/video podcasts. Digital storytelling works even with limited technology. For sound, students need a microphone and access to a product like audacity, Voice Thread , etc. Students write a script, requiring strong writing skills (skills over-looked in the typical PowerPoint). Students may feel more invested in and take more pride in the production of a script which will be shared with the class than in a traditional research paper. Visuals and photographs can be organized, editied and uploaded simply through Picasa, Photostory, or Flickr. With a Webcam, students can create a news show, debate, or panel discussion. These podcasts can be uploaded to a Blog, Wiki or teacher tube and shared with the class, parents, administrators and colleagues, fostering pride, ownership and community. Teachers/librarians can create a portfolio of current and past work.

The challenges to implementing social and collaborative media tools in my rural high school mirror many schools. We have a large percentage of low income students with limited access to technology— no home computer or one so slow that advanced Internet operations are impossible. With budget cuts we struggle to have enough computers and up-to-date equipment. Another problem is the resistance to technology by teachers, administrators and parents. Many see it as unsafe and ineffective. Online safety is a concern, but one that can be prevented by a sound Internet safety policy. Students also need to be aware of the public nature of the Internet: “ Facebook presents students with choices about how to use technology in creative and useful ways while avoiding the pitfalls. Even as a purely social activity, Facebook has the potential to teach students about appropriate citizenship in the online world. (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7025.pdf)

Academically, the challenge is the mind-set of teachers and students. The one-stop shopping mentality ( a search in a popular database) points to the lack of critical thinking skills in traditional research. However, “[l]ike many emerging Internet applications, Facebook [and other social media] also emphasizes the importance of creating content over simply consuming it” (http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7025.pdf)..
The transparency of social and collaborative technology means that teachers/librarians can monitor the research process, alerting students to potential plagiarism and/or copyright issues, building an ethical community of researchers. Most importantly, incorporating social media into education hits students where they live—engaging them in education and effectively preparing them for the world they live in.