Social
Networking
The tide of
proprietary information is changing and social networking is right at the heart
of this change. The current genealogy trend
has been to share information with each other to get a bigger picture on who
your ancestors are. Social networking
fosters communication, engagement, and collaboration. Genealogists consult with each other to
combine information so that information can be gleaned at a greater pace. They communicate, and collaborate with each
other about their ancestors that makes learning personal and fun. I am excited
what technology brings to use, but I am also concerned about safety and
privacy. Facebook is currently collaborating
with ancestry.com to take a persons’ ancestral file information and combine it
with current family Facebook members.
Consider for a moment the ramifications of all this information in one
company’s hands. Are you concerned what
Facebook might do with that kind of information? Exactly, I am too!
The benefits
of social networking is endless with a constant trade of benefits and
liabilities. Verbal skills and
face-to-face communications are sacrificed in lieu of written skills that are
emphasized as we communicate, collaborate, and engage with each other. Technical skills are gained or improved with
sites like Flickr or Googledocs, or ipiccy.com where students can publish
documents, images, or videos online.
Research skills are increased with the mass amount of information
available on the internet. Now we can
connect with friends and family across the street, or all over the world.
With every
blessing also comes great responsibility.
We must make smart and wise choices about the information we choose to share
and recognized internet privacy and security is a real issue to be addressed. Many people give out information of their
personal lives without considering the consequences. What many of us do not recognize is what we
write is a reflection of who we are, what we value and choose to prioritize in
our lives. Who are you? Its simple to tell, just take a look at your Facebook account. Your language, your
faith, even your concerns gives a snapshot on what you value. We decide what is important to us, and the
same is true with online learning. Resources
are constantly traded by what we value most.
We must be
an example, especially to our students, we need to ensure their safety, and
ensure there is not threat to issues such as identity theft, security, privacy. We need to maintain sites, establish ground
rules, and declare to students’ our internet concerns and expectations
(Richardson, 2010). Most of all, we need to emulate proper online etiquette behavior,
thus becoming the model for students to follow. The net provides many opportunities
and learning possibilities are endless. Our
challenge is to provide structured guidance for students to follow to make the
most of their internet learning experience.
References:
Richardson,
W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and
other powerful web tools for classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
