After school, as part of their regular
Facebook check-up routine, students go online and view their notifications.
Common notifications are something like, "John Smith commented on your wall post," or "Emily Jones tagged you in a photo."
As students use websites like Facebook and Twitter socially, similar online resources exist for academic purposes.
For example, Diigo and Delicious are bookmarking websites that help students organize their interests and receive a constant supply of new information on their accounts.
The good thing about these websites is that they are not computer-specific.
"I could bookmark the websites I like on my house desktop and go over to my friend’s laptop and pull up the same websites I bookmarked," said Chris Bigenho, Upper School Director of Instructional Technology. "And there is no need to worry about whether or not the URL is saved to someone else’s
computer."
Collaborative websites enable students to work together online.
"Google Doc is a great website for collaborative learning," Mr. Bigenho said. "Whether it is a student needing help editing their paper, or a group of students working on a project, if it involves any sort of document Power Point, Excel, and Word Google Doc is very helpful. Since all the work is online, students could work on their assignment whenever
and wherever."
Twitter itself can also be used as an
academic tool.
For example, sophomore Marcella Jimenez used TweetMic, Twitter’s recording application, on her phone to record class discussion during her English class.
"I recorded our class discussion with my phone, and I saved the file on my computer," she said. "These recordings were very helpful during finals. I listened to the discussions
for review."
However, some students said they do not want to use social networking technology for academic purposes.
"I would not want to use Facebook for academic discussions," said senior Jordan Neustadt. "I would like to have my social world separate from my academic world."
Mr. Bigenho agrees with Jordan.
"I think it could be seen as my teacher suggesting to have class at the mall when I was a high school student," he said. "Back then when I was a high school student, the mall was a place for me and my friends to hang out and have some social time. Now along with the actual mall, websites like Facebook and Twitter are students’ ‘mall.’ Using them for academic uses could make students feel violated."
In the online world, plenty of resources already exist that could be separated from students’ social playgrounds.
"The ultimate goal is to make every student feel comfortable using the online world for different purposes, academic and social," Mr. Bigenho said. "Currently there are only a few students in Greenhill that I know of who are putting this into action. But the numbers are increasing, and I hope to see a constant increase as our school becomes more technologically active."
