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I saw a post on Mashable about Everloop and decided to check it out.  The site is intended for students ages 8-13 but your 14-15 year olds and children under 8 can use the site as well, provided they comply to the terms of service.  I decided to register as a student to see what the process looks like.  And that’s where things started to get weird.

When a child registers, they choose a name and input their birthdate and a parent’s email.  Of course, I entered in my own email address and clicked continue.  With that, I was able to get into the site and begin establishing myself.  Communication is disabled though, until the parent confirms the email address and registers.  After checking my email and clicking on the link, I was asked to register as the parent.  I loved that I was able to see what information my ‘child’ provided and even make changes (if they lied about their age for example).  It’s the next step that began to trouble me.  After putting in my name and basic info, I was asked to put in my billing information.  Huh?  This is a free site.  Why should I enter in my billing information?  Well, it turns out they have a virtual economy, which can be bought into with US dollars.  No worries there, but there’s also a second reason. In order to confirm that you really are an adult, you have two choices: Pay them $1 via credit card or put in the last four digits of your social security number.  This gave me pause.  To be honest, I think this step right there is going to be a stumbling block for many parents.  Would you want to put in your credit card information for a site that your child will be using?  Or your social, even if it is just the last four?

And right there lies a big part of the problem with alts like Everloop.  Why do you join a social network?  Some people may join just to explore, but most join because their friends, family and colleagues are there.  The same thing goes for students.  They might join a site like Edmodo.com if their teachers are using it, or for a class project…  but otherwise they’re going to go where their friends are.  And that’s Facebook.  And Twitter.  And YouTube.

Believe me, I’m all for alts.  In many schools, sites like Facebook are blocked.  And it’s important for us to be teaching about social networking, both from a safety perspective as well as a ‘setting our students up to succeed’ perspective.  But there’s little impetus for a student to jump into a moderated community that their friends aren’t on, even more so if their parents need to jump through a good number of hoops to get signed up.

It’s discouraging.  I’m a fan of alternatives to social sites, but for the most part, I think they’re always going to be relegated to niche communities.  The lure of the major players is just too strong to pretend that students won’t still flock to them.

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• Everloop Social Media Site For Tweens, But Will They Use It? (blogworld.com)
• Everloop and i-Safe bring “tween” social networking into schools (venturebeat.com)

I think that many people (myself included) that share sites like Twitter at conferences inadvertently do our attendees a disservice. In the effort of attempting to demonstrate how wonderful, simple, powerful and dynamic it is, we make it seem much more effortless than it really is.

For example… How many times per day do you see somebody say, “Give a shout out to the people in Nepal who are attending my presentation about social networks about using the Luge to teach physics!” And then 30-40 people reply with a hearty “Hello”. So attendees believe all it takes it to toss a tweet out there, and dozens of responses will pour in.

What isn’t necessarily shown, or may just be glossed over, is the fact that it takes TIME and EFFORT to gain a few hundred followers. And without having a critical mass of people to message out to, your odds of getting a response from a general tweet are VERY small. If you have 40 followers, more than likely none of them are actually online at the same time as you. And even if they are, who knows if they’re checking Twitter? And even if they are, who knows if they’ll see your tweet? And if they do, how many people will see it and ignore it, versus will see it and respond?

For example, if I send out a “Please give these folks a shout out” tweet, I expect maybe about 30-40 responses on a typical school day during normal hours. If it’s a weekend, or in the evening, you can cut that number in half. I currently have about 5000 followers. So at best, that’s less than 1%. At that rate, if you have 100 followers, could you realistically expect an instant response from even a single person? I’m not sure… It depends on who is following you.

That’s not to say that everyone should run out and get more followers. My point is simply, things aren’t necessarily as rosy and simple as we may make them seem during presentations.

I can’t tell you how many times I see a Twitter newbie who has under 50 followers throw out a request like, “I’m trying to find schools that have updated their AUP this year. If you know someone, please tell me.” Then when they don’t get any responses, they get frustrated and may wind up quitting. While I can’t address what may be an issue with persistence, I do think that person has set themselves up for failure.

I really do think you need to follow/be followed by about 100 people at the least for Twitter to begin to be valuable. If you have a dedicated, highly focused group, that number may be smaller, but in general I think that’s a fair ballpark. If you have less than that, you need to be much more aggressive to get responses.

A few suggestions for people who are new to Twitter or have relatively small audiences right now.

1) Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with putting a message out there multiple times. If you’re worried about looking like a spammer, reword it. Mention that your STILL looking for information. But it’s entirely possible that people didn’t see your message. So give them another chance. And yet another.

2) Ask some people directly to respond. If you send a tweet that includes @TheirUsername, more than likely they will see it. It may take a day or two before they look for personal replies, but most people WILL see it. Unless they have fairly strict privacy settings, it should work. So if there’s someone you think might be able to help you out, send it directly to them by using this feature.

3) Reach out to the hubs in your network. Let’s face it, some people have more followers than others. Maybe they do a lot of conferences, maybe they just have too much time on their hands. Regardless, they may have a longer reach than you do. So contact them directly and ask them to retweet it for you! I’m extremely grateful to have the audience that I do, and I’m happy to share them whenever someone asks. By doing this, you maybe be able to ensure that your request has been seen by a few thousand people instead of a few dozen. Doesn’t guarantee a response, but it does give you better odds.

Of course, the best solution in the long term is to build up your own community. The only real way to do that is to maintain your own presence, to reach out to others, and to follow people and give them the chance to follow you.

For those of you that do present sessions including Twitter, do you see the same thing happening? Is it just me or is this something you’ve experienced yourself? And if so, how do you address it?

As you watch this video, consider what these students will look like when they enter your classroom. Honestly, will they care one whit whether you put their first and last name on the same page as their photo? Will their parents insist that you keep their identity private… or will they insist that you exhibit their learning publicly?

Is your school prepared for students that will have a larger digital portfolio before they enter kindergarten, than most of us educators have as adults?

Enjoy:

They have several basic skins to choose from, but if they don’t quite suit you, you can upload images and tweak the settings through their UI. Or if you want more advanced features, just create your own darn CSS, they fully support it. I can only imagine what people are going to come up with down the road. Features include the ability to allow or disable public profiles, anonymous shouts (tweets), control replies, pownce like file sharing features, and even the ability to keep your network private or approve registrations on an individual basis.

What does this mean? It means that we finally have the ability to create our own Twitters for niche purposes. Youth Voices doesn’t need to hack WordPress anymore to simulate Twitter. Teachers can use it for any classroom project, with full privacy or publicity as needed. I plan to use it for backchannels and as an example for how microblogs work in a less crazy setting than Twitter itself. The possibilities are pretty endless.

Mind you, this isn’t a replacement for Edmodo, a site I’m still a fan of. Edmodo is what Twitter would have looked like if it had been designed by educators for classroom purposes. This is for people who like the Twitter format already and just want their own custom version of it.

If you want to play around with it, visit Tweach42 and send off a few shouts. And when you want to create your own, visit ShoutEm and use the invitation code “doneright“.

What kind of uses do you see Shoutem being used for??

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I’m not a huge fan of people who keep pointing out the same problems that we’ve known about for years without sharing their ideas for solutions. While this video doesn’t share solutions, the fact that it was organized, researched and scripted by students makes a pretty bold statement about new solutions. Anyway, enjoy the video. Well worth watching a couple of times.

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?