The new social networking site is designed to help teachers create, organize and share lesson plans. Unlike traditional curriculum sharing websites, BetterLesson incorporates a unique curriculum organizing and filing system that enables teachers to easily create, store, and share information related to lessons they create.

According to BetterLesson, the product enables teachers to

1. organize and share their entire curriculum for a particular course,
2. easily connect and innovate with other educators,
3. tag and search lessons using state standards,
4. access files and instructional content from anywhere in the world,
5. utilize privacy settings to control who can access their curriculum,
6. easily identify high quality curriculum.

One of the interesting design elements of BetterLesson is its cloud computing infrastructure, which enables teachers to easily transfer information from one location to another. This is an exciting idea for teachers, who know firsthand how difficult it can be to easily store, quickly access, and share lesson plans with colleagues.

Another interesting aspect of BetterLesson is its social networking design. This unique design enables teachers to easily share and find high quality curriculum. The problem with many open source curriculum sharing platforms is they can be overwhelming and, often times, ineffective. Busy teachers don’t have time to search for hours to find a helpful lesson. The social networking design of BetterLesson enables teachers to build their own profiles, join groups and networks, and, most importantly, rank the quality of the lessons or curriculum they view. This means teachers can quickly find experienced teachers who design effective lessons and utilize them.

Although BetterLesson has been in private beta, the organization is currently working directly with schools throughout the United States to build curriculum and improve the effectiveness of the site. By summer 2010, BetterLesson hopes to fully launch the product by providing members with access to a content-rich site with first class teacher support.

Check out BetterLesson for yourself and let us know your thoughts.

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According to Bramble,

“Researchers have already enumerated the benefits that kids can get from traditional media. Watching Sesame Street or Blue’s Clues improves children’s problem-solving skills and school readiness. Teaching students how to use word-processing software, Web-design programs, and video-production tools is a proven way of refocusing at-risk teens on school, and, eventually, getting them jobs. Social networks can also pull in students who are otherwise disengaged, because they draw on kids’ often intense interest in finding new ways to communicate with one another.”

Putting aside the potential pitfalls of utilizing social networking tools in a traditional school setting (i.e., privacy issues, inappropriate student behavior, etc.), how can educators effectively do it? Here’s Bramble’s suggestion,

“For starters, students could talk about what they’re doing on Facebook and company, map out the ways they’re making connections with one another, and share videos and software they’ve created. Once the conversation gets going, teachers could figure out whether some kids were being left out and find ways to increase those students’ media literacy and bring them into the fold. Teachers can manage the project by selecting the best content and conversations, and incorporating it into other parts of the curriculum. If a student created an entry on Wikipedia for a local band or sports team, other students could work on revising the entry and building it into a larger local history project. The audience for school projects need no longer be one hurried teacher.”

Some of Bramble’s ideas sound good, but his suggestion that teachers should set aside valuable instructional time so students can discuss how they are using applications like Facebook to connect with one another seems very simplistic, to say the least. Simply having kids share the content they created over the weekend, for instance, is certainly not effective in terms of  improving student achievement. If social networking technology is going to be used successfully in the classroom, it must be implemented in a systematic way, in a way that directly and clearly supports academic learning. It’s nice to use social media technology as a way to link curriculum to student prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson, let’s say, or as a discussion starter or wrap up to a lesson, but this sort of approach is only marginally beneficial. Considering the potential pitfalls, most teachers are left wondering, “Is using this technology really worth the hassle?”

Bramble also argues teachers should take advantage of our students’ desire to produce things using this technology. Why not have them use it to do something productive? Bramble suggests schools have students

” produce a school-sanctioned video[s]—the re-enactment of a literary or historical scene, for example. This isn’t as simple as a teacher saying, “Why don’t you write a poem about your frustration, rap it on video, and put it on YouTube?” Instead, a teacher could assign students the task of filming a scene from The Scarlet Letter in the stairwell, identifying the dynamic of shaming in the novel, and writing about how it might be playing out in their Facebook news feeds. In math class, students could develop statistical models and graphs of the patterns of information flow in their social networks. To understand how advertising works, students from different backgrounds and with different online habits could compare what’s being hawked to them. And for a school journalism project, teams of students could aggregate other students’ narratives from blogs, Facebook, and Twitter and compile a real-time collective analysis of the state of their educational union.”

This sort of approach makes sense. As I noted in a recent post, having students actually “do” something with their learning is a very effective way to utilize social media technology in the classroom. In other words, social media technology provides an easy way to enable students to actually demonstrate their learning. The “doing” part is the last phase of what Curtis Bonk refers to as a learning wheel– read, reflect, display, and do.

Social networking technology certainly has a place in schools. The hard part is finding truly beneficial applications that promote student learning or foster positive communication between members of the school community.

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1. Who can see the things you share (status updates, photos, videos, etc.)?

“Probably the most critical of the “privacy” changes (yes, we mean those quotes sarcastically) was the change made to status updates. Although there’s now a button beneath the status update field that lets you select who can view any particular update, the new Facebook default for this setting is “Everyone.” And by everyone, they mean everyone.”

“If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.”

“To change this setting back to something of a more private nature, do the following:

• From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click “Privacy Settings” from the list that appears.Click “Profile Information” from the list of choices on the next page.
• Scroll down to the setting “Posts by Me.” This encompasses anything you post, including status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos.
• Change this setting using the drop-down box on the right. We recommend the “Only Friends” setting to ensure that only those people you’ve specifically added as a friend on the network can see the things you post.”

2. Who can see your personal info?

“Facebook has a section of your profile called “personal info,” but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the “personal info” setting on Facebook’s Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.”

“After last month’s privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either “Everyone” (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to “Friends of Friends” (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to “Only Friends” as well. To do so:

• From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click “Privacy Settings” from the list that appears.
• Click “Profile Information” from the list of choices on the next page.
• The third, fourth, and fifth item listed on this page are as follows: “birthday,” “religious and political views,” and “family and relationship.” Locking down birthday to “Only Friends” is wise here, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft.
• Depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not feel comfortable sharing your relationship status and religious and political views with complete strangers. And keep in mind, any setting besides “Only Friends” is just that – a stranger. While “Friends of Friends” sounds innocuous enough, it refers to everyone your friends have added as friends, a large group containing hundreds if not thousands of people you don’t know. All it takes is one less-than-selective friend in your network to give an unsavory person access to this information.”

3. What Google can see– Keep your data off the search engine.

“When you visit Facebook’s Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:

‘There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.’ ”

“While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you’re allowing Google to index. If the box next to “Allow” is checked, you’re giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you’ve marked as visible by “Everyone.” As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines…probably more information than you were comfortable with. To keep your data private and out of the search engines, do the following:

• From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click “Privacy Settings” from the list that appears.
• Click “Search” from the list of choices on the next page.
• Click “Close” on the pop-up message that appears.
• On this page, uncheck the box labeled “Allow” next to the second setting “Public Search Results.” That keeps all your publicly shared information (items set to viewable by “Everyone”) out of the search engines. If you want to see what the end result looks like, click the “see preview” link in blue underneath this setting.”

Although taking these three small steps may not seem very important, they are certainly worth considering. If educators are utilizing Facebook to interact with parents and students, it’s important they fully understand how information is being disseminated by Facebook. Furthermore, as educators we have a special responsibility to to protect the privacy of our parents, students, and staff members.

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Man, I guess Twitter really is a brain drain! By the way, I just woke up, and I guess I should do some work…

While many secondary schools continue to utilize basic Web 1.0 website technology to communicate with parents, students, and the broader community, most of the people schools are trying to reach, particularly the students and parents, rely on Web 2.0 technology like Facebook to share and receive information, even when it relates to education.

Most school websites are one-way information highways that might be appealing in design but lacking in functionality. As a result of the Web 2.0 revolution, students and parents are becoming accustomed to using social media technology to gather important information. From an educator’s perspective, it seems what makes these technologies appealing, particularly to the edupunks, is the various social media tools that enable users to easily publish ideas and broadcast them to a wide audience. Unlike the one way communication associated with Web 1.0, today’s technology enables users to create a sort of digital identity by sharing personal thoughts and relevant ideas. By utilizing social networking tools, savvy users can create and participate in a vibrant online community. For the 21st century student, this is powerful stuff.

With this in mind, it’s important for educators to consider the different ways this technology can be used to improve how schools communicate with students and parents. It’s also important to consider how social media technology can be used to create a dynamic online presence or digital community that promotes important aspects of the school’s mission. One particular Web 2.0 platform with enormous potential to improve the way schools communicate is the social networking site Facebook.

More and more teachers and administrators are taking advantage of the different tools Facebook offers to improve how they communicate with parents and students. What’s exciting is the way Facebook is being used to create a vibrant learning community.

For the past few months, I’ve been using Facebook to communicate with parents. I have to be honest. Being a high school administrator, I had serious reservations about using social media technology in this way. At first, I guess I was really worried about all the potential pitfalls. I suppose it was the administrator side of me!

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few examples of how administrators at my school are using Facebook to improve the way they communicate with parents and students.

1. Constant Contact– Managing a school today is as difficult as ever. With state-mandated testing, extracurricular activities, fundraising pressures, academic concerns, and so on, effective communication is particularly important. But, finding ways to effectively communicate with parents and students is certainly not an easy task. Today’s digital world  is noisy, complex, and often times disorienting. The result often means school communication gets muddled and with it the intended message is often lost in translation.  With all the other things going on, it’s not easy getting the parents’ attention, let alone the students. This is why frequent contact with parents and students is vital to successful school communication. If schools can find a reliable conduit to communicate to parents and students on a regular basis, school administrators are able to share important information that will not only improve student achievement but help build a productive and healthy school culture.

Facebook’s social networking tools can help build the sort of communication structure that enables school administrators to communicate with students and parents on a regular basis. Because most parents and students are comfortable using Facebook to communicate, utilizing the following applications can really help improve school-related communication.

• Group Feature– Creating targeted communication groups, such as for parents, students, specific grade levels, or extracurricular activities, allow administrators to easily share information in a way that is specifically tailored for the recipient.

• Event Schedule Feature– Because most schools need to communicate information related to numerous school-related events, Facebook’s event scheduling feature can really facilitate effective communication. Scheduling an event is very simple and its broadcast feature allows school administrators to not only reach a large audience but easily remind parents and students of important events (For the busy parent, this is certainly a plus!).

• Send Message Feature– This feature enables school administrators to send messages directly to parents and students. Administrators can create a variety of groups based on communication needs. What makes this application so appealing is, much like e-mail, administrators can pinpoint communication to specific parents or students.

• Multimedia Feature– School administrators can share multimedia with parents and students. The ability to easily share multimedia with parents and students can greatly enhance the way schools communicate.

• Announcement Feature– School administrators can easily broadcast announcements and reminders to help parents and students stay on top of important school-related events.

• Blogging Feature– By using the “What’s on your mind?” feature or the “Notes” feature, administrators can provide daily updates, blog about important events and issues, and provide valuable information for parents.

2. Back-to-school– One of the most powerful ways school administrators can use Facebook is to provide parents with a unique inside view of the daily operations of the school. Administrators can take pictures of daily events, record interviews with teachers and students, film student projects or particular parts of a teacher’s lesson and share this information with parents. If designed properly (and in accordance with student privacy rights), these “snapshots” can provide a powerful insight into the school’s community. Because today’s parents really want to be involved in the day-to-day activities of their students, utilizing Facebook can be a very effective way to create this meaningful connection for busy parents. Besides, by emphasizing certain aspects of the school’s community, administrators can have a powerful hand in shaping it.

3. Digital Discussions– By using the discussion feature, school administrators can create a safe and effective way for parents to share ideas with school administrators. As long as the discussion items are properly designed and managed, they can present a wonderful way for parents to participate in the school’s decision making process.

4. Alumni Communication– One of the most popular ways school administrators use Facebook is to help former students connect with their classmates after graduation.

Facebook is a powerful tool for school administrators because its social networking structure can be used to facilitate communication and build a dynamic online community. Most parents and students have Facebook accounts, and they update them on a regular basis. This means school administrators have a powerful communication tool at their finger tips, one that can be used to share all kinds of information– blogs, event updates, photographs, and video. This information can easily be tailored to meet the personal needs of the school’s community.

With this in mind, it’s important for educators to rethink how they communicate with parents and students. This new communication transformation must involve the sorts of social media tools normally associated with Web 2.0. These tools present an exciting opportunity to improve the way educators communicate.

Here are a few links to help you develop a vibrant school community. Good luck!

Opening Facebook: How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom

The Facebook Classroom: 25 Apps that Are Perfect for Online Education

Schools Use Facebook, Twitter to Get Out Their Message

Teacher’s Guide to Using Facebook

PBS Teachers

If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s Dead

Best Practices for Educators Using Facebook

How To Social Media Videos for Administrators

Drive Belonging and Engagement in the Classroom

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Why would anyone want to post updates via Twitter when they could use text messaging? Efficiency. Sending one message by text messaging or the computer can instantly update large numbers interested followers, about what is occurring or something of interest. Furthermore, Twitter provides the option to post a feed to Facebook and blogs. This further extends visibility and provides others access to important events, blog posts, and items of relevance.

In addition to posting personal updates, Twitter is great at providing a window to see what others are talking about. Despite the noise of all the activity, there are several programs that help organize all of the chatter into a more meaningful context.

This raises several questions. Here are a few:

• How can Twitter’s technology be applied to education?
• Is it just one more avalanche of data?

Answers to the questions above and more in the next installment…

With the emergence of social media technology in the classroom, teachers are finding innovative ways to promote student learning. As educators become more sophisticated in terms of utilizing Internet and mobile-based technologies to share information, they are taking advantage of new and exciting opportunities to improve their teaching practice. One particular area of interest to me is the way in which this sort of technology might improve the critical thinking skills of high school students.

Perhaps the most difficult task for a high school teacher is promoting critical thinking in the classroom. As students navigate through the giant web of state-mandated curriculum and federal testing requirements, many of them fail to develop the thinking skills necessary to succeed in college and the work world beyond high school. By graduation, high school students find themselves disinterested and unprepared. Perhaps this is why recent studies have shown American students not only lack the basic skills necessary to be successful in today’s global economy but too often they graduate from high school lacking the most important skill: creativity.

As I understand it, the creative student has highly developed critical thinking skills and is able to formulate relevant questions. The obvious importance of critical thinking to student success is not only confirmed by educational research but by the experience of business and community leaders too.  In fact, a recent study, Ready to Innovate, found that the ability to think critically about problems and find creative solutions are the most important attributes business leaders look for when evaluating candidates. According to the business leaders surveyed in the study, creative thinking involves, at a certain level, that a person exhibit such things as curiosity, the ability to recognize new patterns of information, integrate knowledge across disciplines, and, most importantly, the ability to identify problems. Perhaps the most important aspect of these skills, in terms of promoting critical thinking in high school, is the ability of the learner to formulate meaningful questions and articulate thoughtful answers.

Unfortunately, many high school teachers fail to promote this type of thinking in the classroom. A brief visit to a typical high school classroom will prove as much. Students sit quietly in desks, rarely engaged, while the teacher lectures about state-mandated curriculum with the expectation that the students will reproduce the material on the soon to be taken multiple-choice exam. Perhaps this is why American students lack the critical thinking skills necessary to compete in today’s global economy.

The author Tony Wagner thoughtfully analyzes this problem in his recent book The Global Achievement Gap. According to Wagner, all too often public school teachers fail to develop the types of skills normally associated with critical thinking, particularly the skills that enable students to ask good questions.

One important way for high school teachers to promote critical thinking in the classroom is by simply encouraging students to ask good questions. Effective questioning techniques help students analyze academic problems. By asking appropriate questions, students find themselves able to identify problems and, with some guidance, articulating solutions. Utilizing social media technology to stimulate and manage classroom discussions presents an interesting and, perhaps, effective way to accomplish this.

Taking advantage of social media technology to facilitate discussion can make it possible for students to explore the multifaceted nature of academic problems in a way that is normally difficult to achieve in a classroom setting. Where the usual high school curriculum presents standardized information in preparation for year-end mandated exams, this technology may enable high school teachers to foster critical thinking by enabling them to build unique learning situations in which students explore complex academic topics. Moreover, by utilizing the innovative networking features associated with this technology, students can share ideas, work with other students to solve complex problems, and improve their ability to ask thoughtful questions.

The four types of social media technology that seem most promising in this regard are weblogs, podcasts, wikis, and Twitter. What makes these types of social media technology so promising are their accessibility to both teachers and students, wide-spread use in both education and the private sector, and their relevancy to students. Moreover, because these technologies can be used to foster unique technology-based interactions between students and teachers, they present a wonderful opportunity for educators to develop meaningful student-to-student and teacher-to-student discussions. These discussions, of course, represent opportunities for students to develop better thinking skills as they work to understand complex information and formulate thoughtful questions and responses.

There are certainly challenges to using this technology in a typical high school classroom, however. Perhaps the biggest challenge with social media technology is its newness, if you will. Although teachers are experimenting with different ways to use this technology to foster critical thinking and build collaborative teamwork in the classroom, the success so far is limited at best. This means teachers interested in utilizing social media technology are left with few examples of best practices to follow.

The inherent complexity that results from integrating different types of social media technology with traditional high school curriculum presents significant challenges also. Utilizing social networking tools (e.g., Facebook or MySpace) in conjunction with collaboration (e.g., wikis) and multimedia tools (e.g., Flikr or YouTube) is a very difficult task for a high school teacher who has limited experience with this type of technology.

There are other challenges that should be noted. Often basic technology limitations (e.g., lack of resources, school policy, etc.) make it difficult to utilize social media technology in the classroom. Another problem is this technology requires a significant investment in terms of training and resources if teachers are to effectively design and manage learning activities. Perhaps the most challenging limitation for a high school teacher is time. Is it reasonable to expect high school teachers to spend countless hours developing specific learning activities that use social media technology when they are already strapped for time?

At this point I’d like to hear from you. For those teachers or administrators who utilize social media technology in the classroom, please provide your thoughts. Has this technology enabled you to improve student learning? Has it helped your students develop the skills necessary to ask good questions and, more importantly, think critically about academic topics? Have you found it difficult to create projects or curriculum that require integrating two or more of these programs at the same time? I’m looking forward to your comments.