What can Google+ do for learning?

At ISPP, we are using Google+ with Grades 8-12, and here's why:

Social networking is now so embedded in the personal lives of many of our students that it is integral to the fabric of their relationships. The complexity of their communications goes far beyond the secret notes older generations wrote in friends' textbooks and on scraps of paper. Our children have online friends, followers, and subscribers. They 'like' and re-share. There are politics to what they post and how often they post, and subtle intricacies to making connections. They connect with what we would consider strangers. There are more people involved in their conversations. They have a broader audience. They are building peer support networks and learning from one another and running a diverse subculture in which teachers and parents have little or no presence.

There are three aspects of this reality that we want to address. The first is that we want our students to be participating in an online community that is safe, kind, and helpful, where people look out for each other and bullying is absent. In an unhealthy social environment, low self-esteem may lead people to make inappropriate posts or seek attention in ways that can negatively affect them. In order to avoid getting into trouble or out of shame for what they have done, they may be afraid to come to us for help. If they are already being hurt in their friendships, the experience of a parent or teacher's disapproval may be more than they can stand. We want students to embody the learner profile in and out of school, on and off line, so that they look out for one another, thrive in the subculture of their social lives, and come to us for help when they need it.

The second is that we want students to develop their social networking with adult guidance and academic purpose. We understand that learning is social. The first papers on social learning theory were published in 1963, and studies since then have reinforced the importance of the social aspects of learning. In the 80's the concept evolved with the theory of socially distributed cognition, which includes the idea that knowledge is not held separately in individuals, and instead is distributed across individuals and artifacts (such as peers, Facebook feeds, calculators, databases, and Instagram followers). We are all connected. We function together. Our children are weaving rich connected lives overflowing with images, ideas, and happenings. There are layers upon layers taking place at any moment. They live with a complexity that very few could have imagined even 20 years ago, and to a large extent their connections with adults and academics are kept separate from that complexity. Learning can become so focussed on what students can do independently, assessment, and teacher to student communication that the deep learning students can achieve through their connections with peers and technology is diminished. To balance this out, Google+ creates a school-based protected online social environment where our students can bring some of the complexity of their personal social networks into their academic network, while still keeping their personal and academic networks separate. We want student learning to be as rich, complex, and connected as their social lives. We want students to take the creativity, critical thinking, and engagement they bring to their social accounts, and apply them to their ISPP Google accounts.

Finally, we want our students to develop a digital footprint or online presence that reflects their achievements in and out of school. The academic richness of the IB Programmes includes the learner profile, approaches to learning, creativity, action, service, the arts, and more. The education our students are receiving is the best we have seen in the world to date. The IB teaches students to be curious, engaged, self-directed, knowledgeable, and caring. The learner qualities they develop through their education transfers to the way they live their lives, and they pursue interests and follow dreams outside of the purveyance of the school. We want to ensure that the online academic profile our students create shows the whole child, and reflects not only their school work, but also their personal interests, so that as they apply to schools and for other opportunities they are able to share a rich reflection of the amazing learners and achievers they have become.

With ISPP Google+, our students can develop the social aspect of their learning, connect with one another in an environment with a high teacher presence, and transfer their learning back again to their personal social networks.

Here are just a few basic skills and understandings that students can develop through Google+:

• privacy settings
• selecting a profile photo
• building a profile
• sharing photos and video
• curating the internet through posting, tagging, and +1s (similar to Facebook 'Likes')
• writing thoughtful and dialogue inducing comments
• managing circles (similar to contact groups)
• creating Pages (similar to a Facebook page)
• publishing blog posts and other media
• selecting, understanding, and managing their audience
• joining, participating in, and creating communities

We are excited about the learning that is before us!