Knowledge sharing, knowledge building:

Using social networking to develop critical literacy and encourage creativity

(After returning from teaching ESL in South Korea for 12 months Gail Casey used Action Research to
explore the educational possibilities of online social networks with two of her middle years’ classes.)

This research involved a year 9/10 elective group partnered with year 7 students at Geelong High
School. Students collaborated using an online social network called a “ning” (a screen clip of the main
ning screen is given in figure 1). All used fictional names and could not be identified. Planning and
activities were conducted in the four action research phases (plan, act, analyse, reflect) and an
enormous quantity of data was collected and sorted with only the summary of findings being included
here.

Figure 1 The front page of our year 7 and year 9/10 online ning, social network environment,
used during this collaborative project

Interviews
As a starting point I conducted informal interviews with the year 9/10 students and by combining these
with ning profiles, class conversations and student reflections, I found that students, in their combined
home and school environments, were involved in a great range of online activities. These were the
“usual suspects” -
• Online social environments such as msn & facebook
• Using a range of websites, following their hobbies and interests such as horseriding,
Fan Fiction, bikes, Harry Potter etc
• Gaming online including first person shooter games
• Watching videos and movies from sites such as YouTube
• Downloading a great variety to content from games, video clips, software and music
• Online listening to music
• Uploading pictures and other content
• Using online tutorials to improve their skills in such things as PhotoShop
• Buying and selling on ebay
 • Internet searching with Google and other search engines for homework and such
things as game cheats
• email
Students in this class spend between zero and six hours a day using the Internet Whilst one student
could not afford the Internet at home while one other was not allowed long periods of time on the
Internet, most students appeared to have no limits on the times they spent on the Internet at home.

Classroom activities
These were devised around:-
1. Students examining learning by looking at how learning had changed, how Year 9/10 students
preferred to learn and how year 7 students might prefer to learn.
2. Empowering students by encouraging them to take more responsibility for their learning.

Figure 2 student chat comments from the online ning

Findings
• As educators we need to listen to students’ ideas about learning. I found that by listening to
what students had to say about how education had changed and how they liked to learn helped
me gain further ideas on designing a classroom setting that encouraged students’ use of ICT to
foster their creativity, empower them to be critical about the world around them and make
teaching and learning more relevant to their lifeworlds..
• Students wanted to learn by being engaged in learning and having “fun”. As students interacted
in online social networks they were active learners and looked for sites that were visually
appealing to them. By redesigning my curriculum to include out-of-school student digital
 literacies I was able to make my curriculum more relevant to my students’ lifeworlds. I used
nings, blogs and podcasts to produce a classroom environment that was easily assessable 24/7.
As the action research cycle continued I adjusted the ning setup to allow greater flexibility for
students by allowing them to form their own ning groups without teacher approval and I also
allowed students to add applications to the ning.

Noting the above, student themes and topics were negotiated and learning occurred using the wide
range of internet resources including discussion forums and video tutorials.

Using Online Social Networks

During this research students progressed from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. This was a shift from using the
Internet as a tool of reference to one of collaboration, from passive to active, from consumer to
participant-oriented.

Figure 3 student produced video help tutorials

Findings
• The specially produced online environment offered much more student interaction and student-
centered learning than traditional print based teacher focused learning.
• By giving students time to explore the different ning features such as making friends, being
involved in online chat comments forming groups, discussion forums, adding applications and
using avatars and profiles to form identities etc allowed students to feel comfortable and
engaged with online communication as it gave them play time.
• Once students were comfortable they generally became engaged in this type of communication.
They wanted to make up their own identity, they wanted to make friends, they wanted to
receive comments but most of all they wanted to become active learners in their online
environment.
• Using nings increased flexibility in the learning process and encouraged students’ creativity
and critical thinking.

When using the online ning environment everything was published for all to see and students were, by
default, models to other students. The ning time-stamped all content, hence everyone could see how
much time it took for comments and responses to be posted. A student who had trouble gaining
responses and comments could view other more successful student’s comments and responses as there
were samples of good practice that were easily viewed.

There were also a range of issues of concern that, as the classroom teacher, I had to deal with as
students took ownership of the class ning, developed personal profiles and explored online
communication. These issues included a racist comment, a possible problem with music copyright and
inappropriate avatars. In hindsight I needed to negotiate and publish clearly understood standards for
communication and publication at the start of the project - discussing with the class my expectations
was not sufficient.

Additional findings
• Initially, students gave little thought when using the Internet for research and their stated
opinions were a mixture of Wikipedia and Google data rather than how they felt or thought.
• Students’ ability to critique each other’s work was very limited. I found that it was important
for me, as the teacher, to become more of an active participant in our class social network in
order to model good analysis and critiquing skills.
• On the positive side, students were, surprisingly creative in their products and very supportive
in their comments to each other when giving feedback.
• Students enjoyed the freedom and the breadth of possible interactions of their ning far more
than their blog, but both served different purposes as a teaching resource.
• As the action research cycle progressed, I found that allowing students’ online conversations to
develop more freely resulted in more communication that was in-tune with their lifeworlds and
that my increased tolerance of students’ online conversations resulted in students taking more
ownership of their learning environment.
• Students enjoyed gaining peer feedback from others. They also like to look at what others had
published online, to gain ideas.
• I conducted informal interviews and these confirmed that my students’ perception of learning
was different to my own. Students did not see that communicating online, publishing online
and providing constructive feedback to peers as ‘real’ learning. In fact, five students from the
interviews said that they were not really learning using nings and blogs.
• I found that the ning required students to be active rather than passive learners and that the
majority of students believed that our class ning was classified as “social networking”.

Multimedia and Multimodal documents

This approach meant that the Year 9/10 students were able to use their out-of-school literacies in the
classroom to help them develop their product for their year 7 partners.
• I found that, by incorporating ICT, students were able to produce multimedia and multimodal
documents very easily and this gave them opportunities to express themselves through multiple
modes. This gave students greater opportunity to produce content and address a range of
literacy practices that were appropriate for their ability level, much more so than when using
traditional print media.
• Using multimedia and multimodal documents encouraged students to think and figure out how
to use tools and media in distinctive ways to express their imagination with purpose.
• Seeing the wide range of content produced by students and the complexity of the different
modes and media in which they were produced demonstrates that there is now a wide array of
literacy practices that students are aware of and involved in during their day to day lives.
• Writing for an online audience, rather than just their teacher, help to spur the imagination of my
students.

Teacher observations
• In week one, the year 9/10 students were bored with me, as the teacher, coming into the
classroom at the start of the lesson asking them to face the front, take things out of their hands
and turn their computer screen off in order to listen or brainstorm. During the second week (of
 the four weeks) students commenced making decisions on what work they would do, when
they would do it and how they would do it. Although students were initially hesitant, many
students started to take more responsibility for their learning and student centered learning
began to develop for most.
• Although some students did not use their class time effectively it was clear that others
embraced the opportunity and classroom conversations began to change as students became
aware that the teacher was no longer going to tell them what to do, how to do it and when.
• Involving my students in what I thought were relevant student projects resulted in students
expressing themselves in creative ways.
• Students themselves can be excellent role models as well as great resources to each other and to
the teacher.”

Online social networks (and adolescents’ engagement with them) can teach us a great deal about
multimodal texts and literacies. This type of learning environment changes the mode of learning from
one of passive Internet surfers to active online designers and publishers. Student pages in these
environments show the depth of activity and literacies that print-based texts just cannot provide. If
educators can gain the confidence needed to become involved in these online social networks, then I
believe they would begin to appreciate them as an educational tool which would in turn update and
strengthen literacy curriculum.