John Spragg's List: MA research useful articles - intro phase

• • Discussion on rights and wrongs of facebook! 
    
    "He encouraged parents to assess their child's activities on social networking sites, and discuss removing inappropriate content or connections to people who appear problematic. He encouraged parents to assess their child's activities on social networking sites, and discuss removing inappropriate content or connections to people who appear problematic. "
    
    Approaching and understanding issues around social media is better than restricting use.
• Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who checked Facebook at least once during a 15-minute study period achieved lower grades
• Social networking can provide tools for teaching in compelling ways that engage young students.

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• My biggest gripe is that most students have these great smartphones and barely use the device to a tenth of their potential.
• It is impossible to prevent students from accessing prohibited websites and keep them from texting eachother in class because the teacher cannot monitor 30 cell phones at once
• culture of dependency where the teacher is supposed to control every minute aspect of the learning process

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• The new technologies are as varied as the web itself, but the main systems used in classrooms range from virtual learning environments (VLEs) to commercial software such as wikis and social networking sites. The former are intra-network environments, closed to the outside world and often used as a bin for lecture slides, notes and other supplementary materials. The latter are used to encourage classmates to work together. A 2008 report by Childnet International, funded by the now-defunct education technology quango Becta, said that Facebook and similar technologies are valid educational tools. Yet a more recent report by Ofsted found that teachers weren't using these spaces to their full potential. The key lies in the design, it suggested.