Topic: Social Networking and Bookmarking Websites in the Classroom. University of Akron Class: Instructional Design. Professor/SME: Dr.

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1 Topic: Social Networking and Bookmarking Websites in the Classroom University of Akron Class: Instructional Design Professor/SME: Dr. Ward ID Team Bananas Members: Alexa DiDonato Brandt Laverick Angela Nakovska Due Date: May 5,

2 Introduction: This report, through the utilization of the Instructional Design model, ADDIE, will outline and explain each of its steps in regards to social networking and bookmarking sites in the schools. The ID team responsible for this report is comprised of three current Instructional Technology Master s students from the University of Akron, and teachers from various cultural backgrounds and subject areas (math, music, and ESL). This is our first practical attempt, as future Instructional Designers, and we hope that the information provided within the report is comprehensive enough in regards to identifying the ID problem, collecting the necessary needs and learner analysis, developing and designing the instruction, implementing and then evaluating our instructional design. The time frame allowed for the completion of this ID problem was eight weeks. Analysis Phase: To Block or Unblock? This ended up being the glaring question, or problem, in regards to social networking and bookmarking sites in school districts. However, before we get ahead of ourselves, our first responsibility was to identify the ID problem suggested by our SME, Dr. Ward. Initially, after much discussion during our first meeting with both our team members and SME, it was decided that we wanted participants to: 1) learn how to safely use social networking and bookmarking sites to its fullest potential in regards to learning (self and others), and 2) how to get these tools unblocked by designing a plan in how these social networking sites will/can be aligned with specific content standards. However, after delving deeper into the proposed problem, it was sufficient to say that the ID problem we needed to solve through the use of the ADDIE steps of the Instructional Design model was twofold, and not so easily soluble. We discovered that we needed to 1) get these tools (social networking and bookmarking sites) unblocked, and; 2) teach future participants to learn how to safely use such social networking and bookmarking sites to its fullest potential (self and others). With the same token, our Learning Goal Statement was to inform and have participants and other interested and vested educators effectively and safely incorporate the various social networking and bookmarking sites as learning tools in their classrooms. Therefore, we continue with the first step of the ADDIE model, the analysis stage. To start off the Analysis Phase, we decided on conducting a target population analysis using an informal survey. By developing a survey using the SurveyMonkey website, we first sent it to our classmates in our ID and IT classes asking their help to participate in 2

3 our ID project. However, after three weeks of no replies, we sent the same invitation and survey to all of the IT Program Master s students at the University of Akron. We only received seven replies from students, willing to help us during the Implementation and Evaluation stages of our ID project, and only ten survey results. Apparently, due to the plethora of other ID teams in the ID courses of the IT Master s program at the University of Akron engaged in similar ID projects, ten replies was plenty for our analysis stage. In designing the survey questions, we felt that the following questions were necessary in order to discover who our audience was, their needs, in order to find ways to better solve our ID problem. These included asking about the teaching grade level, the subject area, internet and computer access, are social networking bookmarking sites blocked at their schools, the frequency of internet and computer use, their interest in learning and knowledge about social networking and bookmarking sites, have they every used them in the classroom and in what manner, and how willing and comfortable would they be in explaining the benefits of such sites to their administration? As further documentation of the questions, we have provided the actual survey and an actual link to the survey questions. The following is the survey we sent to our classmates and the IT Master s students. You can also access this survey at the following link: Your take regarding Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites Dear Instructional Technology Master's Students, As a part of our Instructional Design project, we are planning on making an online module to teach educators and administrators how to use social bookmarking and social networking in the classroom to enhance their lessons. As such we would greatly appreciate your input in taking the time to complete this SHORT survey about social networking and bookmarking sites at your earliest convenience (preferably within the week). Your participation is greatly appreciated, and for interested participants will help us better serve your needs regarding social networking and bookmarking sites. We thank everyone in advance for helping us with this endeavor. 1. What grade do you teach? Grade K-2 K Other (please specify) 3

4 2. What subject(s) do you teach? Subject Area Math Math Science Science Social Studies Social Studies Language Arts Language Arts Technology Technology Music Music Art Art Physical Education Physical Education Special Education Special Education Other (please specify) 3. Do you have access to computers and the internet in your school? If so, how frequently do you use it? 4. Do your students have access to computers in your school in a lab typesetting? If so, how often are you able to take your students to a lab typesetting? 5. Do you know what social bookmarking is? If yes, do you use it in your classroom? If yes, how? If no, are you interested in learning what it is and how to use it in your classroom? 6. Do you know what social networking is? If yes, do you use it in your classroom? If yes, how? If no, are you interested in learning what it is and how to use it in your classroom? 4

5 7. Does your school block social bookmarking and networking sites? If yes, what are the reasons? 8. If you knew how, would you feel comfortable explaining the benefits of these technologies to your administration? Yes No 9. Are you open to learning about social bookmarking and networking sites? Yes No 10. If open to learning about social networking and bookmarking sites, what are you interested in learning? If not, what stops you? Results: End of Survey Question 1: The first question of the survey regarded the grades of our participants. What we discovered was that the majority taught grades upper elementary to high school. Question 2: The second question regarded the subject area taught, and out of 27 replies the results were as follows in descending from most to least order: math, science, and social studies. Questions 3 & 4: The third and fourth questions dealt with access to the internet and computers, and frequency of use. For both questions the results were similar (7 out of 10 had access to computers and the internet and used them daily). Questions 5 & 6: The fifth and sixth questions asked participants to share their knowledge about bookmarking and networking sites, and if they are open to learning about using such sites in the classroom. The majority of replies (6 out of 10) were that they knew what social bookmarking and networking sites were, but they did not use them in their classrooms, some (2 out of 10) replied that they did not know, but were interested in learning, and limited number of replies had no learning interested in such tools. 5

6 Question 7: The seventh question asked participants if such tools are being blocked in their schools, and the majority of replied: yes, while only two had them unblocked. Question 8: The eighth question asked participants if they will be willing to explain the benefits if provided with the information about using social bookmarking and networking sites. The majority (7 out of 10) replied yes. Question 9: The ninth question asked participants if they are open to learning about social networking and bookmarking sites? The replies to this question from all of the participants were yes. Question 10: The tenth question asked participants to list items they wanted to learn in regards to social bookmarking and networking sites. The results were as follows (3/10 wanted to know how to use them in the classroom; 1/10 wanted to know how to use them to connect parents to the classroom; 1/10 had not teaching assignment at the moment, 2/10 did not have the time, and 3 participants skipped answering this question. Based on the results presented above, we would like to mention the limitations of using the survey monkey website for the survey. As a free user, without purchasing or upgrading to the Gold or Platinum plan, we were limited to no more than 10 questions per survey, were not being able to download and filter responses after we received them, based on particular characteristics or text analysis). If this was something we had do as a real instructional designer, we would have probably upgraded to a plan which would allow us more options. Furthermore, being that survey monkey limits the number of questions one may create for using the free prescription; we received a limited understanding and evidence of our learners and their needs. If we had more time, we would have switched from using surveymonkey, to another website in creating and publishing our survey, because it limited our effectiveness of designing more of a comprehensive survey and obtaining varied results. Furthermore, we would like to mention that, one of the errors we made is limiting ourselves to only using the IT Master s students at the University of Akron. For future references, we would have sent the same survey throughout the three school districts we work in, in order to get a more complete and valid needs and learner analysis of the problem. Additionally, if we had more time, we would have personally met with some participants to conduct interviews, in order to get better understanding of the learners and their needs. However, at this being only our first time at practically applying all of the steps of the ADDIE model to solve a problem, we had to satisfy ourselves with the results and circumstances presented. Design Phase: After our analysis of our learners and the content to be taught, we decided to make our website contain three main sections. We found that we needed to first discuss 6

7 the fears that most teachers have regarding using social media in the classroom. The barriers that stand in the way of implementation of these sites are explained. Also, the website explains the process of going to the administration to get these websites unblocked from the school computers so that they can be used in the classroom as well as a sample letter to send to the administration about doing just that. Additional resources are provided, such as statistics, terminology, as well as opinions and situations that relate to unblocking social networking and bookmarking sites. Lastly, at the bottom of that page is an assignment to take a survey regarding their thoughts on use of social networking and bookmarking sites in schools. The second section of the website is based on an overview of the social networking and social bookmarking sites. We wanted to provide a database of sites for the learners so that they can see the positives and the negatives of each. We found that rather than having one page that lists and describes both the social networking and bookmarking sites together, we should have one page for each. On each of the web pages, there is a matrix of qualities of all of the sites. For example, the matrix for social networking has categories like: instant updates, user profile, own site, hit count, privacy options, friend requests, app for that, multiple photo uploads, membership approval, and ads. We believe this illustrates how each one of the sites compares to each other. There is then a paragraph about each one of the websites in the matrix. The social networking sites described are Twitter, Academia, Google Buzz, Classroom 2.0, and Facebook. The same layout is presented for the social bookmarking sites with little differences. The social networking sites presented are Delicious, Newsvine, Linkatopia, Brainfly, and Diigo. We feel that these two web pages give good overviews of the pros and cons of each social networking and bookmarking sits presented. We obviously couldn t have possibly highlighted all of the sites, but we picked a few of each that we feel are the best out there. The last web page on our site described methods of implementation regarding social networking and bookmarking websites. We decided to take some of the websites that were overviewed on the previous two pages and go a little bit more in depth on how to actually use it in the classroom. There are videos and articles explaining how teachers have used these various websites in their classroom. These examples are just a few ways of how to use these websites in the classroom given to inspire the learners to use them in their own classroom. At the end of that page there is an assignment to click over to the discussion page to discuss how they would use these websites in their own classroom. The navigation through the site was planned to be very easy as they were to click down each link on the left hand side of the page. This would allow them to go through the module the way we had planned. However, it seems as though something has been changed throughout the course of the learners taking the module so that the order 7

8 of our module was flipped. We have contacted Wikispaces about this problem, but they had given us the advice to delete and recreate the pages so that they would be in the correct order. While this would have been a viable solution, we didn t want to take down the module while the learners were expected to go through it. Due to the fact that the website was made through wikispaces, the font styles and sizes were rather limited. There was an option to buy the premium package to make our website which would include color themes and a large amount of options that could be chosen to make the website a little bit easier on the eye, but we decided not to purchase that. We found it hard to manipulate the size and styles of the fonts. The text editor for wikispaces can be hard to maneuver at times, so we did the best we could to unify our pages so they looked similar. There are several different ways that the content is presented on the website. There are several YouTube videos, pdf versions of articles, and word documents. Development Phase: We chose to construct a website not only at the request of Dr. Ward, but we thought it would be the easiest way to collect the resources that would best serve our goal. Due to the fact that our topic is a completely online subject, creating a website seemed common sense. Additionally, there are YouTube videos, Adobe PDF files, and Microsoft Word documents that are included on the website. They are presented either as links to outside web pages or documents that can be downloaded from our wiki site. The message content is centered around three main ideas: the barriers between teachers and using social networking and bookmarking sites, an overview of the types of bookmarking and networking sites, and the implementation of such sites in the classroom. The organization of the material is such that the three sections can be stand alone information pieces as well as a module grouped together to form an instructional unit. The pages were set up to flow from one to the next. However, the navigation got changed for a reason we do not know, which we have not been able to change back. While there were some choices to change font size, style, and color, we decided to keep the font sizes and styles readable and common. As far as informational resources are concerned, there were mostly PDF documents as well as YouTube videos used. For the first section of the website, the section regarding the barriers, had the content placed mostly on the page as text. There is a word document of the digital citizenship contract as well as the assignment for that page. All of the informational material used from other websites and documents are cited when needed. For the overview pages, the table showing the characteristics of each type of bookmarking or networking websites was created by the group. Lastly, 8

9 in the implementation page, there are several links for YouTube videos and a couple articles to show how teachers use these websites in their classrooms. Working URL for the website: To evaluate our website, we asked our students to fill out a survey so that we can see their opinions. We wanted to ask questions about their satisfaction with access, the information, the length of the pages, the organization as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the website. We asked if the students would plan on using the information provided by the website because that was our final goal. We wanted students to use what they learned in this module in their classrooms. Finally, we asked if the learners had anything that they wanted to improve. Implementation Phase: For our implementation, we put all of our information into a wiki and sent the link to our students. Since our students are all from our classes, we knew they already had wiki user names so we were not required to show them how to do this. One person outside of class participated as well and already had a wiki username. The link for the wiki module is We decided to give our students a week to complete the module just as we have a week to complete our modules in class. We sent the link to the students on April 22 and it was to be completed by April 29. Unfortunately, we did not have many that completed the assignments that went along with the wiki but they did complete the ending survey. The challenges that occurred while making this assignment made it difficult to get a true understanding of the success of this project. Our first challenge was trying to make sure everything was in the correct order on the wiki site. The only way to make sure that the navigation of the site is in e correct order is to erase everything and redo it in the order that you want the navigation to be placed in. We figured this out but not until it was too late and the implementation was already over. The major challenge that occurred was the lack of participation. We made sure that the assignments were not too difficult and that they would be easy to complete seeing as how our target audience was working on their own project and wrapping up their semesters. Unfortunately, our participants must have felt we were asking took much of them because they chose to not do the assignments we asked them to do. Because of this, we have no idea if our students understood the information provided or not. The most successful part of this project was the survey at the end, asking the target audience what they thought of the module. This assignment was completed by 3 9

10 of the 4 participants and 2 of the 3 surveys gave us an accurate depiction of what could have been improved in the module. In the survey, we were given clear suggestions on what we could do to improve the module. One suggestion was actually going along with one of the things we struggled with - the navigation of the wiki site. Another suggestion was for the survey itself. The survey confused some people in that they were unsure of what numbers correlated with which response. This could be the reason that the last response to the survey was so contradicting of itself. Another suggestion was to include another social networking site that was not oriented in case the students are not of the age that they have a address of their own. This was a very helpful suggestion and is definitely something to be added in the module for the future. If this student would have done the assignments, they could have mentioned this to the other students and it could have been a discussion while the module was still going on rather than after. Evaluation Phase: We did two different evaluations. One form of evaluation was to see how the students understood the material presented to them. This evaluation consisted of 3 separate assignments. The first was asking the students to provide a previous lesson plan along with an updated version of the same lesson plan using social bookmarking. Students were to post both lesson plans in the discussion portion of the wiki site. The second assignment asked the students to answer the questions, "How would you use social bookmarking in your classroom." and "How would you use social networking in your classroom.". Both of these questions were asked and were to be answered in the discussion portion of the wiki site so that other students in the module could view, comment, and use the ideas and thoughts of their fellow classmates. The third assignment was asking the target audience to take a poll of fellow teachers, administrators, and students to see their opinion of unblocking social networking and social bookmarking sites within the school. All of these assignments were not very difficult and not very time consuming but unfortunately, only one person out of the 4 that actually participated as asked, completed the assignments. The other evaluation was for our benefit. At the end of our wiki, the students were to complete a survey of how they liked the information and whether they thought it was useful or not. As mentioned before, this was the most successful part of this project because this was the only "assignment" in the wiki that the students actually completed. In comparing quantity vs. quality, it is very hard to compare because of the lack of assignments completed. The ending survey was helpful to us and provided 10

11 helpful suggestions; however, one of the surveys did not seem to be accurate or taken seriously. All comments on the survey were that the student was very dissatisfied and did not find the information to be useful at all. The answer to the last question on the survey contradicts these answers by giving the response of "yes" when asked if they would use this information. It is hard to take the answers from this survey seriously and use this information to our benefit when this person contradicts their answers so much. There were no suggestions regarding the evaluation process. This would have been helpful to understand why the students did not participate in the given assignments. Conclusion: This whole ADDIE process allowed us to truly test ourselves, as would future Instructional Designers might. We felt that each step of the ADDIE process and error we encountered was a wonderful learning opportunity for us. Overall, based on the majority of evaluations, we accomplished our goal. We provided participants with instructional material by informing them of various social networking and bookmarking sites, providing them with implementation techniques and examples of how to apply each social networking and bookmarking tool in their classroom, and if interested, how to unblock or whitelist social sites in order for students to utilize such technology tools in the classroom. 11

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