Teach42

96% of students with online access have used social networking technologies. 71% have done it in the last 7 days.

Well now, isn’t that a fun way to kick off a report on social networking amongst students? The NSBA has completed a study of 1277 9-17 year old students, 1039 parents and 250 district leaders who make the policies for their schools. The report was sent out to the media a week or two ago, but was just released officially today. Are bloggers media? Based on how many have already reviewed the study, I’d have to say we certainly think we are!

You should definitely read the report for yourself. It’s sure to be a hot topic of conversation for years to come (people are still quoting the PEW study from 2005 about teen internet use), and this one definitely has some tasty, controversial nuggets in it.

For example, “Only .08% of all students say they’ve actually met someone in person from an online encounter without their parents’ permission.” For those of you that aren’t mathematically inclined, that’s a really small number. Compared to the number of news stories we hear about internet predators, it really forces you to start to put things in perspective. I’m not saying that we can ignore internet predators, or that they aren’t more evil than internet spammers, but there aren’t an army of faceless millions who are trying to steal our children through the use of MySpace. I was surprised to read that only 1 in 14 students had experienced cyberbullying. I would have expected that number to be far higher, but perhaps that’s just because the media reporting of those incidents have warped my sense of proportion.

Aside from predators and safety, the report had some interesting things to say about the role of social networking in students’ lives. “Nearly half of [district leaders] expect social networking sites to introduce students to ‘new and different kinds of students.’ More than 4 in 10 hope social networking will help students ‘learn to express themselves better creatively’ and ‘develop globa relationships.’” The numbers from the parents are even higher. 3 in 4 parents think that social networking sites could actually improve their students educational and conflict resolution skills. About the same number think it can improve their students’ social skills. That’s a pretty strong statement about the parents expectations.

Of course, the question then becomes, could students get access to those sites even if they wanted to? 85% of district leaders insist that adult monitoring would be required for students to use these sites, and 71% would still prohibit chat and IM. So we want students networking, but we don’t want them communicating? Something has to give there. Even if people start designing EduFriendly versions of all these tools, it won’t stop students from going on their own to where the masses are.

The report does have some positive messaging to convey in it’s conclusion.

Many schools initially banned or restricted Internet use, only to ease up when the educational value of the Internet became clear. The same is likely to be the case with social networking. Safety policies remain important, as does teaching students about online safety and responsible online expression — but students may learn these lessons better while they’re actually using social networking tools.

After reading through the report, I got curious as to how many teachers actually had access to these sorts of tools right now. I did a very informal survey on Twitter, a TwitterPoll, and asked people whether their school had blocked access to Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Ning or Meebo. You can see the results in the chart below. Twitter, Ning, Blogger and Flickr are the only sites that were unblocked more often than they were blocked. And unsurprisingly, Facebook and MySpace were blocked by the most districts. However, what did surprise me was how many districts blocked Meebo! Definitely supports the findings of the NSBA report.

As I bring this post to a close, I leave you with one question to think about: If social networking is a good thing, and students should be learning how to use those sites appropriately, at what grade level should students have access to an unfiltered internet?

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