W6: Chat 4- Tech

At the university I work at we subscribe to Yammer. It is an internal social media platform for employees, not students. You can set up groups (I set up an EdTech group) and others can freely join. You have friends or followers and post comments. Problem is, because it is tied to your employment it is more often used to post announcements and congratulate people on accomplishments rather than generate social interaction. I think people are cautious about using this system too informally as there is no anonymity. For a school setting it would be great to generate discussions that may cross over to other classes or grades - an interdisciplinary approach.

Chat 4. This reminds me of a time when large workplaces had proprietary systems on their intranet which included private messaging, bulletin boards, and other spaces accessible only to employees. That may well still be the case, but I suspect more are using freely available social media tools. Hopefully only the people I invite to Google Drive can share the folder! I am interested in Patrick's answer below with the example of university dorms and the idea of setting up city-wide wifi or cellular service. It might not be free, but surely it would be a less than the current options and a great way to connect the community.

Chat 4:… Yes, it is technically possible to detach social media tools from the Internet. Having an isolated network that is disconnected from the larger global network that we call the Internet is pretty common in work environments and schools. I am not sure how often social media networks are used as intranets but it is possible. Now, the validity of such a tool is up for questions but, yes, I think it could be useful. In the case of the school in Nunavut, I could see it being very helpful as an environment for people to socialize in a non-physical space. However, the technical hurdle to your proposal is that the people in this community aren’t very well connected to a local network, let alone the global network. So, having an intranet-based social network will run into the same issues as using the global social networks, more or less. What I would be really interested in seeing is some of these remote towns and communities creating one local area network that allows them to have a connection to the people in their communities without the need for Internet access. It kind of reminds me of how some university dorms allow local networks. Students can host websites, share content, chat, and really any form of network-based activity all without having to leave their network. Frosty Point would probably have the best luck with implementing a city-wide WiFi or cellular network instead of laying fiber or cable. As long as there was a local ISP that connected everyone together, it is totally doable. With regards to the applications and implications, almost any open source or roll-your-own style application or service can be used. Sure, they won’t have a local Facebook but they could always use something like Diaspora. I think the overall implications are that they could have a stronger connection to the people in their community. There used to be a time when people interacted with their neighbors and this would be a modern way to do so. Although just like they did in the ‘50s and ‘60s, there can be negative interactions with people, especially if they are allowed to be anonymous. Anonymity allows people to do some really horrible things but is also a very necessary evil for freedom of expression. I could see a local social network degrading very quickly if people don’t fully respect the value of the community of which they are a part.

I believe that a "decoupling" is possible and that it might be a much more accepted practice of intergrating social media into the schools, as it will decease the risk of being off-task and can ensure the creation of a safer environment (you control who has access, and can monitor for any inappropriate behavior).

Chat 4: I'm going to diverge a bit from the discussion below and give another reason for decoupling. I wrote something lately (I can't remember if it was for this course, on the survey form, or somewhere else) about my main trepidation with social media in the classroom being cyber bullying. It would be necessary to decouple social media for classroom use because the teacher needs to have administrative privileges to be able to monitor and track any inappropriate communication between students. You can't do that if you just let them go on Facebook in school.

Chat 4: I don't think decoupling is the term, more like "selective routing". Providing guided access to the required information for learning. This could include some social media tools, but the purpose is always to reach the teaching objectives. If a tool is proven to be less effective at achieving this goal (i.e. Facebook), rout around it to provide more effective and efficient tools and pathways to knowledge.

Thanks for the post Michael, your comments definitely bring me back to an era of technology where Social Media definitely meant something different. Your comment about how many Social Media platforms today are becoming increasingly "walled in" has great meaning to it. I believe platforms like Facebook do this with a commercialization agenda to keep people on their sites (ie develop a superficial community of users tied to it's functions). Perhaps the decoupling of social media from the internet can bring back some of that authentic community that you speak of (ie ham radio, usenet or 56k modem BBS ). Thanks for the post.

Chat 4: In terms of decoupling social media tools from the internet, I would argue that it is possible and that in fact this activity has a decades long history. For example, early bulletin board systems in the 1980s (those associated with computer and hacker and phreak culture, those associated with universities, those associated with researchers, etc.) were not part of the Internet and were active social media systems. Internet bullet board platofrms like phpBB emerged directly from the dial-in BBS concept. Ham radio and associated radio clubs, especially ones that regularly make contact with distant operators and users could also be considered forms of non-digital social media. Internal digital messaging systems associated with early computer labs at public schools mid 1990s might also fit the criteria. Usenet is also a form of social media that predates the Internet; the protocol emerged in 1980 and HTTP didn't really emerge until the end of that decade. The strange thing is that a lot of these early forms of social media have died out, probably because they require a fairly high amount of technical knowledge to use them. (I'm the only person I know who still knows how to connect to Usenet). The progression seems to be that complicated forms of social networks are replaced by simpler forms, and so Facebook yielded to Instagram, and Instagram may yet yield to Snapchat. The implication is that each new platform that emerges seems to have become progressively more "walled in." Snapchat basically has one or two functions. Compare that to some of the unlimited fun and tomfoolery you could get up to on ham radio, or just "war dialing" with a 56K modem (dialing a list of random numbers to see what BBS or other systems you might connect to). Creating social media platforms in the model of a "walled garden" allows the developer to control what actions the user can perform, who they can communicate with, and to more easily serve ads, track usage, and all kinds of other limitation mechanisms. Decoupling social media from the Internet and re-envisioning some of its historic uses allows a whole range of possibilities that you rarely see anymore.

Chat 4: Yes, it’s possible and yes, it is useful. Many teachers utilize “analog” social media in their classrooms prior to actually initiating its digital use. This is a great way to introduce digital citizenship concepts and to explore the impact of an expanded audience before posting beyond the classroom walls. In this way, safety protocols and appropriate posts can be explored in secure environments with adult guidance. Here is a blog post about using an analog Twitter wall in the classroom: http://www.twoguysandsomeipads.com/2013/10/analog-twitter-wall-to-build.html

Looking forward to hearing some of your thoughts on decoupling social media from the internet. We had some interesting thoughts in our group as our solution promotes internal community and resource building.