Schools blocking social-networking sites? A good and bad thing, but now a solution.

An interesting point was brought up in a recent article by Nicholas Bramble from Slate.com. In his article he talks about how students are being punished for posting inappropriate videos on sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

The content of these videos consisted of everything from school fights to dancing teachers—go figure. Like Bramble says, it's safe to assume that: if the school administration found these videos, they would likely punish the students and take down said videos.

However, Bramble proposes an interesting idea. He says, and I agree, that instead of shunning the world of social networks that students are so deeply invested in, school systems need to figure out creative ways to incorporate social networks into their teaching methods.

Bramble gives several examples of ways this can be accomplished: producing videos for school projects and posting them on YouTube for peer review, developing software applications that can sync with Facebook/MySpace for teacher-student communication purposes, or the administration using social networks to monitor unfortunate incidents such as student fights, etc.

Though I agree with all of Bramble's points and love the idea of schools using sources like YouTube and Facebook to educate and engage their students in a variety of creative ways, unfortunately I don't think it's going to happen any time soon. This is partly due to the fact that social-networking sites just have too much inappropriate content that is too easily accessible to our children—in school and at home. Because of this, I agree with the schools' decision to block students from using social networks while at school. Like I've said before, there is just too much content on these networks that is made by adults and for adults.

Nevertheless, I believe that it's important for our kids to be “digitally literate” as it's becoming more and more necessary in their education. In my opinion, it is also important for teachers to have a reliable, yet safe means of communication with their students. On Yoursphere we've incorporated the tools and resources necessary for students and teachers to do just that.

Schools or individual classes can make their own sphere where they can interact with each other. The teacher(s) can go in and lead their class by posting assignments or answering questions for the students. The students essentially create their own classroom community where they can share information, give each other feedback, or get involved in activities that they would otherwise be unaware of.

In a sense, Yoursphere provides a foundation for all the great ideas that Bramble mentioned in his article, and though the integration of old teaching methods and new teaching methods is still a bit away—we can be optimistic of such an integration with sites like Yoursphere providing a safer-social-networking experience that schools can rely on.

If you are an educator, teacher, cousnelor, administrator, coach or youth group leader and want to leverage social networking with your students, contact us with any questions at CustomerService@Yoursphere.com, or call us at 888.905.9898.

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