Journal#2

After reading the article, “Social Networking for the K-12 Set” by Jim Klein, I was surprised at learning that a school district had designed and created their own custom social networking site. It’s pretty neat to learn how technologies, in this case social networking, can be adapted and used in educational environments. It is very inspiring that three people spent their own time which they were not paid for, and were able to create this social networking site. They obviously created the site with a lot of different things in mind, such as making it necessary for teachers to monitor any information that students choose to display publicly. One thing that I thought about while reading the article was the fact that students from an entire district could view other students’ work on the site. It made me think about this contrasts with how the only opportunities for students to view each other’s work in most schools is on bulletin boards in the school office or possibly in the halls at school. It seems like there have many benefits for teachers and students in the district as a result of this site.

I would like to know if there are plans to lend this technology out to other districts that may be interested. I didn’t catch any information that hinted at this and I think that if it has made as big an impact as it sounds like it has, that it is something that could be utilized in other districts as well.

I would have liked to know a little more detail about how the site works and what kind of different options there are for teachers and students on the site. The article described generally what kinds of things are on the site such as blogs and so forth, but I was curious about how the site works possibly more from a teacher’s perspective. Like can the teacher set up a class page and does the teacher control the layout and available options for the students in their class? I don’t recall reading anything about whether or not curriculum is incorporated to create an online element to individual classes.