The Socially Networked Classroom: You don't need technology to network in the classroom (really!)

In the few short years that have been studying and using Web 2.0 in my classes, it was only until recently after finishing William Kist's The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age that I finally recognized a way help my colleagues implement the social networking aspect of learning into our classrooms.

Kist, who teaches literacy education course at Kent State University, along with several of the teachers featured in the book all recognize one important factor: that Web 2.0 technology--in Kist's words the 'new media'--have transformed how our students interact and communicate. Kist questions why we don't utilize that same sort of platform in our classrooms of the twenty-first century. Consequently, The Socially Networked Classroom s teachers to adopt at some level a degree of social networking in their classrooms and their lessons.

But what's important to recognize is that Kist doesn't demand that teachers use technology, but rather that they adopt, to some degree, the rationale behind the technology that our students use on a regular basis--that they take for granted--in our classroom. The interactivity and connectedness that arises from Web 2.0 does not require that teachers give up in despair because their school and/or district does not have the latest technological bells and whistles. But rather the opposite: utilize what you have available says Kist.

Kist uses the Starbucks analogy to help the reader pinpoint their own level of comfort and expertise from the 'Short' (just starting to use social networking and have very little technology resources) all the way up to the 'Venti' (a veteran all ready to write his/her own book!). In Kist's view, the coffee (and idea of social networking) is the same whether it is in the classroom or online. It is the amount that is the difference. No doubt, there is something in this book for every teacher at every level of technology expertise.

JY