Social Network @ School: Must Have or Nice To Have
Two years ago I took my family to the Greek island of Rhodes. One evening
we decided to visit the old town. To my surprise, my daughter Shirley, a known shopaholic,
showed no interest to buy or enjoy the scenery. When I asked her about dinner
options, she said: “I don’t care, but let go to a place with WiFi.”
This little story symbolizes the change in Maslow Hierarchy of
Needs. Connectivity is placed as a very basic need for the younger generation.
Just after fulfilling the physical needs of shelter and food.
The real need for connectivity for teens is to be on top of
everything, anywhere, anytime and all the time. The main purpose of the desire
to be connected is socialization, modern socialization. Teens are sensing that
they must interact with friends and classmate about everything, using all
social channels: Facebook, Whats’up, Instegram, Pintrest and much more and any
device: PC, laptop, Tablet or Smartphone.
The same tendency is applicable also at school and affiliation ages
are dropping constantly. In the first grades most students are connected to a
social network and around half of them carry a smartphone with internet
connection.
So, more and more schools are forced to open the gates to the social
networks and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) era. From the other hand, teachers
are not capable to treat a virtual crisis such as boycotting kids or
penetration of intruders to the Network.
In the last two years, several concerned parents in different point
of the Globe decided to build a secured environment for the kids. We tested
different approaches, some of them are content-centered (usually sponsored by
the publishers and owners of the digital content) or LMS-Oriented (placing a
social layer above the content. Both types are considered “educational” while
kids are seeking “fun”.
One refreshing solution is NetoKids. Currently it is the only
social network for elementary schools. The NetoKids approach is from the child’s
point of view: the desire for a fun and entertaining virtual playground where she
or he can socialize, share pan play. Thanks to the “childish” vision, the
platform is very engaging.
Since NetoKids is an institutional solution, it is purchased by
schools and the registration is done by the IT manager of the establishment. Therefore,
no external persons can access the Network. Each parent can see his own kids.
The Educators can upload pedagogical content, share knowledge with
the students; interact with them and with the parents.
On a third level, NetoKids serves the whole community in a school-centered
platform.
From our evaluation, NetoKids is the best of all the evaluated
platforms.
In conclusion: we understand that the Social Networks phenomenon is
here to stay. Due to the dense and low cost cellular coverage and the proliferation
of Internet-enabled smartphone, school firewall and security barriers are
meaningless. In addition, kids must be connected all the time. Therefore, schools are losing this battle and
it is wiser that the schools will adopt a social network that will be fun,
engaging, entertaining, safe and with substantial pedagogical values.
