The other night at dinner my eleven year old daughter asked me "What's instagam?" and then proceeded to ask if she could have an account because all her friends were on it. I told her no because I don't like the idea of her on a social network yet (and it's probably against their TOS anyway).
Truthfully, I don't know why there isn't a K-12 social network that has schools and teachers, and kids were grouped by class, and teachers could moderate all posts and (have the option to) see all messages (with a notice to the parties that it had been looked at). That would alleviate any concerns I had about inappropriate content, and online bullying (there's a record, kids would be accountable for what was said), and provide immediate benefit to students and parents (who could maybe have accounts that were read-only for public discussions and their own children's correspondence).
Edit: As numerous replies have pointed out, there apparently is one, edmodo.com. I guess it's just not used around (or at least not in my district).
Because kids would never use it. They like their hidden caves. It's similar to passing secret notes to each other in class. Except now they can do it from afar.
Oh, they would use it if it was a valuable resource for asking for help with homework, communicating with other students and teachers, the only way to contact some of their friends (which aren't allowed on other networks), or in any way mandated. Parents would like it for the control it offered, and kids aren't in total control of their choices.
Kids might also want and indeed use other social networks, but I would feel much more comfortable as a parent telling them no if I knew they had this to fall back on.
Chicken and egg problem - they wouldn't be really active ther because they don't want to, and because noone is really active, then it wouldn't be a valuable resource for homework and communicating with other students.
I've seen a large implementation (around 1/3 schools in my area) that technically could do all that, but you can only 'mandate' a horse to the water but can't make it drink - in the end, they were used for parents to look up grades communicate with teachers, while kids used only the absolutely practical things rarely, and since they couldn't be mandatory (as not 100% can afford a computer at home) it sort of died out. It would be fun to ask the developers what percent of kids sent even a single message to another kid... All at the same time, the ten year olds are extremely active online elsewhere.
I wonder how much of that was based on (lack of) teacher buy-in and parents knowing about it? I can tell you that if the teacher was available on such a system in my are, there would be at least a few users just from my kids.
Beyond any moral or parent protectiveness issues, Facebook, Google Plus and Instagram all require you be at least 13 years old to use their services. My (very limited) understanding is that TOS are in some cases legally enforceable now, so letting kids use those sites is problematic from my perspective.
What teacher buy-in would you like and reasonably expect?
Does such a system have a single practical benefit to a teacher doing their job, that they couldn't / wouldn't do better offline by simply talking to the kid at school after the lesson? It's a benefit for the parents, and they got the daily status information (attendance, grades, discipline&other issues) flowing quickly and easily from teachers to parents, that part worked.
What would you expect from a teacher buy-in there - individual assistance with the homework online in the evenings ? My imagination is failing me here :) The original post sort of implied that it would be the place where you'd want kids to move their communication between themselves, no? (and they wouldn't avoid any important communication in any place moderated or monitored by their parents, naturally)
In any case, teachers pretty much everywhere tend to be overworked and underpaid; as much as they want to chat with a few kids individually they are already doing it in school. However, if you're (for a random example) teaching math to only 6 groups of 30 pupils each, then if you'd spend after hours 5 minutes weekly on online communication for each student, it would come out 15 hours per week, on top of handling homework - it's simply not going to happen.
> Does such a system have a single practical benefit to a teacher doing their job, that they couldn't / wouldn't do better offline by simply talking to the kid at school after the lesson?
I think so, as long as the scope is clearly defined. You are right in your later implications that it could easily be subverted to a tool making more work for teachers, and I was erroneously drifting down that path.
> What would you expect from a teacher buy-in there
Listing homework for the night
Listing upcoming longer term assignment dates
Noting any information that students/parents should be aware of
Sending important announcements to students/parents
Addendums to lesson plans that they forgot to cover or came to light later ("Joey brought to light that I might have been unclear or misspoke when I was referring to the Spanish inquisition. What I should have said is that 'No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!' That should help you complete your History of Monty Python unit tonight.")
An official way to send a message to a teacher outside of class
I receive emails from one daughter's teacher on a regular basis, at least twice a week, because she hates the school website software (I hate it as well, it's horrendously bad). The other daughter's teacher has emailed maybe once, to confirm the address. I assume all her updates are going to the website, I haven't seen them. The teachers are all very responsive to email though.
> The original post sort of implied that it would be the place where you'd want kids to move their communication between themselves, no?
No, just that it is a place they could communicate between themselves, with some other benefits and a heaping level of oversight. My daughters would use it because 1) They aren't on any social networks, 2) they don't have any email addresses I know of (I'm not discounting that they don't have any, but I doubt it at this point, ask again in a year), and 3) we don't have a land line, just cell phones, so she doesn't have a lot of easy ways to contact some of her friends.
> In any case, teachers pretty much everywhere tend to be overworked and underpaid
Agreed. I'm all about using technology to make life better and reduce work, not create more work. When I'm referring to teacher moderation, my original thought was more along the lines of the teacher being able to research and see message history of a student when actively searching. If someone complains they are being bullied or targeted, that shouldn't be any more acceptable in the online system as in the classroom. I think kids need a safe place to learn this.
As a replacement for a class website, I think it would have quite a bit of potential.
For this functionality such systems work okay - but they won't work for kids-to-kids communication due to the same chicken and egg problem.
Your daughters wouldn't (couldn't) use it the way you imagine, because, face it, the 'critical mass' of other kids who'd they want to talk to simply wouldn't be on such a system online/active/quickly responding as they are on facebook/snapchat/whatever.
And I'm not sure if any classmate communication forum with a heaping level of oversight is realistic - the nature of teens and pre-teens is such that any must-be-part-of social activities would happen elsewhere; and if all the good stuff is elsewhere, then they don't need/want to use the monitored forum.
My college has some combination course/forum software (Canvas, if you want to know). The only forum thread ( for my CS class was started by yours truly, and there are no replies. It's possible that other people use the private message system, and we look at the site to get assignments, but that's about it. I had a friend tell me about a class she took where forum participation was mandatory (with quotas for various actions), resulting in the predictable phoniness. The forum for my accounting class has no activity whatsoever.
So essentially, no one uses it as a social tool. I doubt young children would be that interested either. It would be hard to take seriously as a "fall back", either. The real fall-back is email and SMS.
The way you describe it, it could work in theory. But kids (humans) don't wanna feel like all their thoughts are going to be scrutinized by someone above them and possibly punished. Remember when you'd have secret agreements (pinky swear!) with friends about things that would get you in trouble with mom? Yeah.
I'd be worried about the burden this places on teachers (if they are policing it). The normal age 15 cut off seems reasonable. Kids can just deal with it (or resourcefully sneak around if so inclined).
Well, by moderation I mean the teacher has full control, not that the teacher has to every response (but maybe every post). Read-only parent accounts could help with this.
Same issue here: pre-teen kids asking about why so-and-so has 100's of Instagram followers. The school system encouraged social networks by introducing Edmodo[1]. Signed our pre-teen up with a private / restricted account but that level of restriction isn't the norm. The photo stream seems like a mix of LOLcats and 4chan/v but with a ton of snarky comments that puts HN'ers to shame.
Edmodo is mainly for augmenting the classroom and isn't designed and used for student-to-student social networking outside of topics in the class. It's a great tool though for educating kids with what is considered appropriate/inappropriate behavior online.
Facebook EDU: a school-managed Facebook account with parental controls. I wonder how long it will be before this happens. I like your idea, but I'm not sure how I would feel if Facebook operated it.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't; Do you want useful features rolled out on a regular basis, or you want peace of mind that the company involved is dedicated to working directly with K-12 institutions as their primary concern, without alternate revenue streams and business needs getting in the way.
Truthfully, I don't know why there isn't a K-12 social network that has schools and teachers, and kids were grouped by class, and teachers could moderate all posts and (have the option to) see all messages (with a notice to the parties that it had been looked at). That would alleviate any concerns I had about inappropriate content, and online bullying (there's a record, kids would be accountable for what was said), and provide immediate benefit to students and parents (who could maybe have accounts that were read-only for public discussions and their own children's correspondence).
Edit: As numerous replies have pointed out, there apparently is one, edmodo.com. I guess it's just not used around (or at least not in my district).