There is abundance of advantages as previously mentioned, but at the same time there are some concerns which will be discussed in the following section.
45 4.3.1. Copyright
As social network sites allow users to share their works with the world, inevitably, copyright became an issue to be concerned, especially using pictures and photos. As these two teachers said, these kids don‟t really understand the situation; thus, there is an urgent need to teach them.
“They‟re using their own images, and if they use images online, they quote the source, it is not copyrighted.” (A-3-03)
“I think that copyright issues are a problem. Students think there are images online they can just use them if they want to.” (A-5-03).
“One thing I found is, it‟s been quite difficult for them to understand they can‟t just use any photos on Google, they got to have the right, there gotta be creative commons, attributions, and they can use it. I told them a number of times, but they still don‟t get it, so I notice it, I‟ll talk to them and ask them to take it down. “(D-2-01)
4.3.2. Proper behaviors
Social network sites help people connect with one another; under this circumstance, to keep the activities moving on smoothly, students certainly need to be taught the proper etiquette on the Internet.
Four of these teachers talked about netiquette which is basically about having proper manners and language usage on the Internet. For example, do not use slang; do not bully; do not do bad things. Aside from that, students should be learning the productive and responsible way of using social network sites; it would be better if teachers monitor it, or they have to supervise it.
“Are they using appropriate netiquette? It‟s just like being polite online and on the internet, as a good citizen, as using appropriate language; it‟s a language, or is it appropriate; am I polite, I‟m not doing any bullying, they‟re using photos that are appropriate. “(A-3-02)
“Don‟t use slang; don‟t use abbreviations or acronyms because others cannot understand the abbreviation.” (A-5-07)
“I was also aware of that. As a non-native speaker, if a person talks to me with a bunch of slang, probably I can‟t get a thing out of it. Also, slang is really a regional thing; even a native speaker would have problems understanding it sometimes.”(R-1026-05)
“Bullying is probably a concern, and practice appropriate behaviors.” (A-5-04).
“I think they have to learn how to use social network sites appropriately. “ (A-4-10) “I teach them nettiques.”(C-3-06)
46
“I teach them how to actually use these tools as learning tools, use them in a proper and productive way, just get kids understand that is not just about texting to your friends, it‟s about real usage.” (C-3-07)
“You just can‟t just give them to the children and expect them just to have free advantage, you do have to teach them better digital citizenship, monitor it.” (D-3-05)
“My other concern is sometimes my students might write something not appropriate somewhere else.”(D-3-01)
“Perhaps, students would sweat to do bad things. “(E-3-03)
“I think if they learn the correct way or proper way to use it, we don‟t really have to worry about it, because bullying could be happening in real life, it could totally be happening anywhere, this is not just happening online. I don‟t see there‟s a point to overly worry about.”(R-1026-04)
On the other hand, teaching students to respect the other person or people talking to them is essential. Mutual respect is quite important while doing online activities and students have to learn that.
“We had a situation, one time we were skyping with a class in Texas, the teacher sort of talked in a very very thick accent, I had a little group of kids who started making fun of it while we were skyping with them, so I had to step in…That was a real learning experience, because I had to talk to them about what that meant, what they were doing. This isn‟t just some random whoever, those are people there that they are talking to, they are talking about…sometimes it‟s hard to remember that, there‟s another person on the other side of the computer.” (B-6-02)
“It is true and I work with little kids, it‟s even harder for them to understand that, so the more I use social networking the more they will understand that‟s a person, not just a picture, it‟s a person.”(B-6-03)
“That‟s exactly a point because if these kids think those are just some random internet people, they wouldn‟t care about them at all. “ (R-1103-04)
“I‟ve been talking to people on social network sites too. I noticed they didn‟t really respect me, they just thought I was something on the internet, an item or a tool they could easily use. I remember there was this Chinese guy, he kept throwing grammar questions at me, I was like, at first, I tried to be nice and patient, but it was just going way over the top, he
47
kept doing it and totally drove me nuts. It didn‟t make any sense. So I just removed him. I met a bunch of people like that. They wanted something from me. I‟ve learned quite a bit and I‟m just gonna block or remove them, simple.” (R-1103-05)
In addition, this Australian teacher said that they need to learn to care about other cultures as there were some misunderstandings in the process.
“What we do in Australia we say it normal, but in other cultures don‟t. So we have offended some, we didn‟t mean to but we did, so we learn to care about.” (A-5-06)
4.3.3. Internet safety/predators/strangers
According to these teachers, Internet safety is an issue which should be taught or emphasized, especially for students at a younger age.
For some kids, they may have little sense of privacy, so they need to understand the importance of keeping their personal information private.
“I think there are privacy issues that students just need to be careful, especially the younger ones, don‟t give out personal information.” (A-5-02).
“They‟re still making mistakes I taught them about, don‟t write any personal information, I just told them. “ (D-1-09)
When it comes to online strangers, there might be some risks as they would do something bad and it could be really scary. Therefore, students have to be careful and know how to protect themselves and stay away from potential danger.
“There‟s this thing, I think it‟s kind of scary because you don‟t know who it is, you don‟t know who you are opening yourself up to.” (B-4-01)
“I found it really annoying because you don‟t know if the other person is being honest with you, I mean, I remember one time I was talking to this Chinese guy, he literally told me he was born and raised in Australia, but the thing is, ever since we started speaking English, I noticed there was an obvious Chinese accent, so I was like, oh really, yeah, I totally know you‟re Chinese, and I was thinking, you can‟t be serious . I was just thinking, you know what? I just talked to three Aussies that day earlier. I totally know what they sound like.
Obviously he doesn‟t sound like them at all. And he couldn‟t hear my foreign accent in my English either; he kept saying I spoke just like Americans and even wondered if I was born there, I was like, come on, dude, I totally know there‟s something in there that I want to smooth it out so bad. I mean, obviously he just made the whole thing up, about his identity
48
or whatsoever. He couldn‟t be born and raised down there. There‟s no way he can trick me into this. I was just thinking how many people he had tricked? He could trick them but sorry I‟m not that dumb. I don‟t know why people do this; they‟re just some wannabes, you know? A lot of people fake their profiles on those language exchange sites, they wrote English as their native language which is totally not true. They wanted to teach me English as they cannot even get their short self-introductions correct. It‟s really ironic. I met tons of people just like that. “(R-1127-01)
“You have to be very careful; you can‟t just open it up. I have to teach these 7 or 8 years olds the safety on the internet.” (C-3-05)
“My main one would be getting somebody coming on from the global community that would say something inappropriate to the children. “(D-2-07)
“We hope that those kids are already online will learn to use it safely and well.”(D-4-01)
“Some of my concerns were they would have to connect people that I don‟t know. “(E-3-04) 4.3.4. Parents
As reported, parents would have been anxious, or worse, even mortified by the use of social network sites in the classroom setting, but as long as they were explained, this was no longer a problem. Hence, there is a priority to let these parents understand the benefits before starting.
“Probably the parents are concerned, they‟re worried. They‟re worried about the kids because they don‟t understand the social network. “(A-5-08)
“When I first started, parents were very concerned; I really had to teach parents how this is beneficial, just getting them to understand that when we‟re communicating with people.”
(B-6-01)
“My biggest suggestion would be to teach to educate the parents. That‟s who‟s scared. The kids aren‟t scared at all.” (B-7-01)
“I heard this from other teachers. They said their parents were basically overly worried about everything. So they tried to tell them about things they‟ve been doing, so gradually their parents are getting less concerned or they would just not be.” (R-1121-04)
“I think you gotta tell the parents pretty clearly about the things that you‟re gonna do, because I heard this from other teachers, they actually told me, their parents were very concerned and very conservative as well, so they tried to get everything clear to them, so finally they agreed with that.” (R-1125-03)
49 4.3.5. Accessibility
Accessibility in the school is another concern if teachers want students doing online activities in their classrooms.
As a matter of fact, for schools lacking sufficient number of computers, it is really tough to implement activities on social network sites.
“I think it‟s because of the school equipment. In general, for a public school, there is a computer center, but it is for the whole school; they don‟t really have plenty computers or similar devices in the classroom, so honestly it‟s really hard.” (R-1026-07)
One possible way is that they can let students bring their personal devices and use those devices to access outside resources in class if necessary. It would also enable students the flexibility to learn in this way.
Moreover, speaking of ICT equipment in her school, this Australian teacher said that these students can rent small laptops at a cheap rate so each of them can use these netbooks in classes.
“We‟re lucky as we are a really affluent society, the school told the students to rent the little netbooks, so the parents only contribute for 100 dollars for 3 years, but we save money for textbooks, so we use digital books, we ask them to use digital textbooks and online resources, and that saves money because textbooks are very expensive.” (A-9-01) Other than that, as reported by this teacher, for teachers from countries with internet-controlled policy, sometimes it would not be able to access.
“I‟ve worked with teachers from China before, who, you know, they wake up in the morning and things are working and the next day they are blocked, like, very difficult to use any kind of tools, you never know what‟s gonna be available for you.“ (B-4-04)
On the other hand, all of these teachers are allowed to use social network sites in their classrooms, presumably meaning there is no restriction to them. But as one of these teachers said, unfortunately, in some schools these sites are blocked.
“There‟s not a policy for the whole United States, it‟s just really a district by district policy.
In my district, nothing‟s blocked. If I wanna use it, then I get permission from the parents, and then everyone is ok so I could. It really just depends on the schools. Some schools block everything.” (B-7-02)
“From what I heard, some teachers don‟t allow students to use social network sites in the classes. I think their concern is they don‟t understand what students are doing online. So
50
they‟re just overly worried about it. But personally I think if teachers can understand or try to understand what students are doing online, they definitely don‟t have to worry about it anymore.“ (R-1026-03)
Briefly speaking, accessibility in a classroom is dependent on the equipment and related policies, so to be more realistic, this should not be ignored.
4.4 Discussion
In this section, roles of using social network sites in a classroom setting, teacher attitudes and beliefs, related concerns of applying social network sites to teaching are discussed. In the last part, the author presented her personal reflections.
4.4.1 Roles of social network sites in the teaching process
In accordance with Siemens‟ study (2005), Connectivism has been considered to provide new insights in the area of learning theories as it is where social learning is integrated with social media technologies. From this point of view, learning is a network phenomenon being influenced and enhanced by socialization, technology, and context of occurrence. Not surprisingly, in this study, there are different perceived benefits of applying social network sites to teaching.
To begin with, one of the points that these teachers constantly mentioned is that students have been using these sites a lot and are really enjoying using them; besides, they saw there would be some advantage to adopt these sites into their teaching. Obviously, this was the starting point.
Indeed, there is a need to leverage social network sites to enhance teaching and learning in a classroom setting.
Social network sites are motivators as students started to engage more actively in their projects or lessons. While having the actual audience read their works online and get their comments on them, they actually felt the appeal inside of them and thus got more motivated which was similar to a positive reinforcement. As compared to that, they were previously writing for their teachers only, currently they want to do it better because of a group of readers are out there. It was also reported students felt excited to get connected with other classes through social network sites;
that was also motivating these students.
As students and teachers are grouped and get connected with other classmates and classes, they can have conversations and share their works with one another; they also did various projects collaboratively and even had presentations to people from different regions or countries.
51
Therefore, this was a great opportunity to bring them together and get joined. At the same time, they started building a stronger connection with their peers and got inspired in one way or another.
In terms of that, social network sites make students learn from real experiences. These teachers got others to talk to their classes, such as another professional from a different country or occupation as a guest speaker, or as simple as a class speaking their target language. The students then were shown the authentic examples in the real world, rather than studied and learned from textbooks, and they liked doing so. Hence, students can learn the first-hand experience from real people and learn things happening outside of classrooms and beyond schools.
As for teachers themselves, they started building Personal Learning Networks on social network sites. They have other teachers or professionals in their contact lists that they can turn to and seek collaborating opportunities; ask for advices, and exchange thoughts or ideas. This is also a supporting system that they can reach out. They can get connected with like-minded people and stay current, so they would get clung.
At the same time, students are learning a variety of skills. Since these teachers do not have a formal assessment on those activities on social network sites, their focus is to make students participate more and become interested in learning and learn skills, such as how to communicate well with other students or teachers, how to be good digital citizens, and how to open themselves up to other people as they are getting experienced in online activities and learning the netiquette.
While lives of students are occupied by these digital tools, teachers themselves have been getting on those sites for professional purpose as well. The wide appeal to both students and teachers for using social network sites for educational purpose is to reach out to the people in the real world. Throughout incorporating the functionality of social media within an educational setting, they definitely got certain great opportunities to broaden their outlooks with familiarity and flexibility.
4.4.2 Attitudes and beliefs of teachers with the use of social network sites
According to Prensky‟s concepts of digital natives and digital immigrants (2001), as these teachers are all over thirties, they should be considered digital immigrants, meaning they are protestant, hesitant, and reluctant to use social network sites or any other similar tools in their teaching. However, this is simply not true which is understandable as these teachers were found on certain websites related to educational technologies or social network sites. These teachers
52
generally hold a positive attitude toward the using those sites as they were found through the Internet. Intuitively, this implied that that they have been engaging in using these sites. They are not negative toward using social network sites or educational network sites (social network sites for educational worksites only). However, there was still slightly difference among them as reported. When they were asked, they said that they have been getting very involved since they have had great experiences of the use. Moreover, it was mentioned that teachers have to be open and willing to take a risk. At the same time, they have been trying to integrate the use to their curriculum, too. To make other school staff and parents understand the benefits, they need to communicate with those people. Among them, a teacher appeared to be very protective of her students and get it planned in advance. Another teacher especially said as she used those sites more, she personally got more motivated, thus, this implied that she has been proactive. But basically, these teachers are positive and proactive toward it.
As for supporting the use of social network sites among students, it was said that it is possible to engage them in educational activities on those sites. As kids in this generation really like using social network sites, they probably know more than their teachers. Since two of these teachers realized that, they started trying to adopt the use in their classrooms. The other two teachers
As for supporting the use of social network sites among students, it was said that it is possible to engage them in educational activities on those sites. As kids in this generation really like using social network sites, they probably know more than their teachers. Since two of these teachers realized that, they started trying to adopt the use in their classrooms. The other two teachers