Is Facebook a Learning Tool?

Photo from Franco Bouly

So far at ISTE10, I've been hearing a lot about social networking in education. It started at Edubloggercon on Saturday, where there were multiple discussions about learning spaces, PLNs, and then Web 3.0, which is a term I'm sure Ben Grey dislikes.

Here's my takeaway so far:

• If you ask Jeff Utecht, we should be integrating Facebook via the marketing departments at our schools to gain some leverage. His experience is that students asked to use Facebook as a user group tool. Whether his experience in an international school translates to American public schools remains to be seen.

• If you ask David Jakes, students say that they don't want Facebook at school. He says student's say, "stay out of my space."

• If you ask Will Richardson, inspiring students to leverage students to use Facebook, whether it's as group or fan pages, might be the most effective way to incorporate Facebook into learning at this point. He says, "we're in a disruptive phase right now," where everything is basically being sorted out.

I think social networking does have a place in education. But I think the biggest question is, should we be using Facebook?  Or should we be staying out of their space, using alternative tools like Buddy Press or Ning, to inform or shape student uses of Facebook?

What do you think?

Ning: Lesson Learned (and how to avoid future disenfranchisement)

It can't be that surprising. 

Ning says today that they are cutting free networks and laying off staff. The outrage on Twitter from teachers (who rely on free stuff) is understandable:

The writing was on the Ning wall; just look at the past. Michael Arrington from TechCrunch predicted Ning was dead four years ago.  They improved a lot since then, but I know that you know, that you know that I know- that I'm not the only person to think that Ning is lacking some critical element.  Some folks are pretty blatant in their distaste for the tool. I dare say the largest reason we are using Ning is because...it's free. Shouldn't your first reason for using a tool be- because it's good? Now, whether this poll below states that is another thing.

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How can we avoid this disenfranchisement in the future?

The Problem: You're an educator, or a school district, and you're cash-strapped. You want to find free tools online that you can use with your students.  You'd like to create a community, and Ning.com was a free piece of that puzzle. However, something like Ning required a large buy-in, meaning, it's not a tool that you can use simply for a day like Wordle.net, or drop.io, but one that, if it is to grow (like IEAR.org has been doing lately) the people in your social community have to put in real time- writing, sharing, creating profiles, adding links, and uploading images and videos. Ning requires a huge buy-in, which means that if it fails- there could be a huge disenfranchisment to the community. There could even be trust lost in the Internet, it's tools, and people might think twice before they start joining more networks next time because their time and effort may be wasted.

As I look on the Web, one can already see educators looking for more "free" tools and alternatives, but will that solve this problem? Will buying into another free tool like Ning be worth it?  Here's a model that I think represents this problem nicely.  The problem with free web tools can be summed up with this sentence model:

Web 2.0 is to free, as a wolf is to a sheep.  (Or a wolf in sheep's clothing.)

Web 2.0 tools have really one goal these days, and if you follow what's happening in the venture capitalist market, it's really- to get bought.  It's a wolf in sheep's clothing- it looks all cute and fluffy, but soon as you get to reliant on that wool come sheerin' season- look out- because that wolf wants to eat your entire social network. How can you ask teachers and educators to buy into a product, when that goal as a company is not to grow, but to get a pay day? I'm not sure if that was Ning's goal, maybe it is to grow, but we must tread lightly before we buy in that deep.

So how do we prevent this from happening again? How do we prevent from losing our learning environments? Three possible solutions.

1. Always look at the fine print. There is always a price. Before you base an entire community on one tool, you need to look at who is creating the tool. Are they a small operation of 1-2 people, who are trying to get sucked up by a bigger company? Or are they an established organization or company (like Google), who you know are going to be around for a while? We should not be surpised. Look at the creators and make a decision about your buy-in based on that common sense. Read TechCrunch or Mashable. It really will help.

2. Lobby ISTE to create an educator tool. Can ISTE provide some leadership in creating a network that educators could use, which could be free or have a very small fee? Wouldn't it be nice knowing that the organization that provides leadership in the Ed Tech community is actually nurturing their own network of educators by creating their own tool? I think they have the resources to pull this one off. What do you think?

3. Just Pay: The Web 2.0 market is just that right now- it's a market. It's burgeoning market, and in order for the tools you like to survive, they have to make money. We know that we don't want our students to see ad-based content, so we have to lobby our schools to pay for these tools or pay for them ourselves. I've paid for many a subscription out of my own pocket, whether it was for Voicethread.com, Edublogs.com, or others. It's not much, and personally, it's worth it to allow my kids to use such cool and progressive tools. ISTE has grants, and so do most state educational organizations. Having the right tool is going to help your learning environment, which will pay off for you down the road because the products that your students will create will be the most cutting edge stuff that is out there.

Back to hosted?
Someone on Twitter mentioned that perhaps we should go back to a hosted solution, like Buddypress (from Wordpress). I disagree with that option. The best tools are going to be in the cloud, and I don't think that it's time to go backward right now. Some cloud tool will eventually win us over. This problem won't be solved until the Web 2.0 market has grown and evolved enough that there are some real competitors in the social networking arena. Right now Facebook is at the top, and Myspace is falling drastically. It's no wonder that Ning is suffering. With social networking, people would rather have one place to go to- not three or ten.  If Facebook created a Facebook for Educators, now we'd have a real solution.

Mark Zuckerberg could probably afford that.