Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students. Or they believe that social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience.

Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content.  I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective.

In one class my graduate assistant and I are working with a teacher in a Technology Applications class.  Our goal is to reinvent the classroom and, more important, the learning that takes place. We structured the learning to be autonomous, self-directed, creative, collaborative, and networked.   We decided to let the student teams pick which digital media project they wanted to pursue.  Some students elected to team together to produce a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that target teens. These students liked the idea of using digital media to tell compelling stories about the challenges of teen life.  Other students wanted to produce short narratives.  They were excited about creating worlds, characters, and narrative dilemmas that allowed their artistic identities to flourish.

In one of our first activities we selected a sample of teen produced PSAs and narrative shorts for the students to study.  We asked them to view and critique the different styles, aesthetics, narrative strategies, and technical approaches to digital media storytelling.  The teacher posted the links to the videos online and provided the instructions.  Suddenly one student raised her hand.  She could not access some of the videos.  Another student raised her hand.  She was having the same problem.  At least two of the videos that we asked them to critique were posted to YouTube.  The teacher and I had overlooked the fact that YouTube was blocked. A few students used proxy servers to access the videos, a typical workaround in this school.  As we struggled to figure out a way to proceed with the learning activity it was clear that we needed to recalibrate the design of the class.

We faced a similar challenge in a game design class that we are working with. Some of the students were intrigued by the prospects of using a Facebook poll to conduct research to build ‘user personas’ of their peers.  We thought that the poll would be useful in teaching them some of the principles of human-centered design and also expand their social media repertoire. But because Facebook is blocked the poll could only be conducted outside of school.  This prevented us from working with them in the classroom.  It also posed a problem for some of the students who either lacked access to the internet at home or have to share computers with parents and siblings.

We are learning a lot about how young people from this community, which has been hit especially hard by the recession and the growing wealth gap in the United States, are managing their participation in the digital world.  The old theories about the digital divide—the access narrative—only explain a small part of what is happening in edge communities.

The real issue, of course, is not social media but learning.  Specifically, the fact that our schools are disconnected from young learners and how their learning practices are evolving.  The decision to block social media is inconsistent with how students use social media as a powerful node in their learning network.  Can social media be a distraction in the classroom?  Absolutely.  Will some students access questionable content if given the opportunity?  Yes.  But many students use social media to enhance their learning, expand the reach of the classroom, find the things that they ‘need to know,’ and fashion their own personal learning networks.  We have met students who have used YouTube to learn how to play a musical instrument—a not so insignificant fact for students whose  families can not afford private music lessons.   We have seen students use YouTube to help them pursue an interest in building their own gaming computer or share a multi-media project that they developed.   Last summer I wrote about students from this same school and how they created a dynamic learning community to support their interest in creating games.  Many of them shared YouTube videos with each other in order to learn how to use the game authoring software, GameSalad.  (Because it was a summer program, the students and their teacher successfully lobbied to have YouTube unblocked).

A key part of the work that we are doing with students reaches beyond the typical new media competencies such as computer, information, and digital literacy.   The teacher believes that network literacy is also crucial.  That is, teaching students what Henry Jenkins explains is, “the ability to effectively tap social networks to disperse ones’ own ideas and media products.”  Cathy Davidson’s students at Duke made a case for network literacy, that is, “using online sources to network, knowledge-outreach, publicize content, collaborate and innovate.”  A number of these students are creators and makers.  They design blogs, websites, games, and graphic art. By blocking social media schools are also blocking the opportunity:

1)    to teach students about the inventive and powerful ways that communities around the world are using social media

2) for students and teachers to experience the educational potential of social media together

3)    for students to distribute their work with the larger world

4)    for students to reimagine their creative and civic identities in the age of networked media

In the not so distant future the notion that schools should block social media will become difficult to defend.  Before that happens schools will have to reimagine their mission in the lives of young learners, the communities that they serve, and the extraordinary possibilities of networked media and networked literacy.

Part of our research is designed to explore the opportunities for and influence of “connected learning” in the lives of teens.  What is connected learning?  It is a concept that the Connected Learning Research Network, a group of researchers supported by the MacArthur Foundation, will be working to develop and refine. Broadly speaking, connected learning refers to the increasingly complex ways in which young people’s learning ecologies are evolving.  It is the notion that in addition to happening anytime and anywhere learning happens across the many different networks that teens’ navigate.  School is an obvious node in a young learner’s network.  But school represents only one node among many others which includes after school sites, extracurricular activities, online communities, libraries, family, and peer communities just to name a few.  When the lines that distinguish each of these is blurred and learning happens fluidly across the different nodes we believe that connected learning–learning that is social, mobile, engaged, efficacious, student-driven, adult supported, or civic-oriented—is happening.   One obvious example of connected learning involves students who are able to connect their out of school or informal learning with the learning activities that are situated in formal learning spaces, namely schools.

A number of questions frame our examination of these learning practices: What are the factors that lead to connected learning?  Are some youth more likely than others to experience connected learning?’  How do various social indicators like race, ethnicity, class, gender, and academic orientation influence the likelihood of connected learning occurring?  How can schools encourage connected learning? What is the value of creating opportunities for a greater diversity of young people to experience connected learning?

The Site

The high school that we are working with is an incredibly diverse environment. The school is a majority-minority site with whites making up about twelve percent of the overall student population.  More than twelve percent of students are designated as English Language Learners.  There is some degree of economic diversity though more than half, 55%, of the students are designated as low-income.  In many respects the school’s demographics reflect the population shifts that are transforming the eighteen year old and younger population in the United States; specifically, the degree to which U.S. children are more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before.

What are we learning about connected learning in this community?

Evidence of Connected Learning 

There will be more extensive data collection, analysis, and formal reporting to come but we are beginning to see evidence that connected learning is happening among our students and in a school that is struggling to keep students academically engaged and prepared for meaningful participation in a 21^st century information-oriented economy. Some of the early evidence suggest that young people in the social and economic margins are actively building pathways for connected learning for a variety of reasons: to supplement what they view as poorly stimulating classroom experiences; to create rich and rewarding peer and social networks; to move into interest-driven offline and online communities; to develop their digital media production skills in areas such as graphic arts, game design, video, and music production; to foster the development of the civic self; and to develop the skills and competencies that they believe hold the key to greater social and economic mobility.  Not all of the students that we have met fit this description but those distinctions make this community especially fascinating.  Why is that some are developing an orientation toward connected learning and others are not?

In just a short period of time we have discovered that young people who are grappling with the hidden and not so hidden injuries of race, ethnicity, class, and language barriers are practicing very distinct notions of connected learning for reasons and in contexts that researchers currently have not explored with much rigor.  Doing so will help provide data and insight to those concerned about the learning divides that are contributing to historic social, educational, and economic inequalities.  We believe the answers to these and other questions can help address the inequities that continue to shape the lives of the young and the digital.

During my visit I had the opportunity to tour a school in Ituzaingo, a Buenos Aires municipality.  As we entered the school I was struck by how education or at least the model of what a school looks and feels like in Argentina was strikingly similar to the United States.  For example, students:  are organized by age, attend class for a fixed period of time during the week, and sit in classrooms that are arranged in orderly rows facing an instructor located at the head of the classroom.

The school is populated by students from low-income households. In Argentina many students from poor communities drop out before completing secondary school.  The Director of the school explained that about thirty percent of the students entering the 10^th grade in her school will drop out.  If a student makes it past 10^th grade the odds of continuing through the twelfth grade improve. Many of the students in this school will not complete all of the requirements to earn their secondary degree.  In some cases they will abandon school because of a loss of interest. Others will cut their education short in order to enter the workforce to help support their families.  Only about five percent of the students will finish college.

When I asked the Director how she hoped Conectar Igualdad would impact her school she did not hesitate.  Speaking through a translator she explained that the availability of the netbooks and the chance to gain a least some basic computer literacy—the use of spreadsheets, word processing—would convince some students to continue their education.  In fact, many of the students persuaded their parents to attend this school precisely because the netbooks would be available.  Conectar Igualdad has promised to give each student who finishes school a netbook.  The opportunity to connect learning to young people’s digital lives is often regarded as a source of motivation to further develop a learner identity. Like many other parts of the world some of the most economically disadvantaged communities in Argentina view technology as essential to getting a quality education.

What is the future of one-to-one computing in Argentina’s schools? What the architects of Conectar Igualdad are beginning to realize is that as difficult as it has been to get computers into the hands of students the most daunting challenge lies ahead: developing a culture and a curriculum that promotes digital literacy that is authentic and empowering.  Here are three challenges that Argentina and many other nations, including the United States, face in the drive to build a more equitable digital future.

1. Teacher Support and Development. In the school that I visited there is still resistance among some teachers to embrace the newly distributed netbooks.  Many teachers are simply not convinced that the integration of networked media into the classroom is necessary.  Similar to other countries Argentina has to deal with the generational divide—the gap between adult engagement with digital media and student participation in digital media culture.  In some respects this represent a genuine cultural and behavioral disconnect between teachers and students.  In other cases it illustrates a skills gap that limits the ability of teachers to fully exploit the learning opportunities that digital media affords. Successful implementation of a one-to-one computing model certainly requires teacher investment and involvement but it also requires teacher training and development.  Building 21^st century school also demands that we develop 21^st century teachers, that is, teachers who integrate technology into the classroom in ways that are purposeful and capable of scaffolding powerful learning experiences.

2. Education, Cultural Capital, and Social Inequality.  School is only one node in a young person’s learning network.  Research consistently shows that students who live in homes and communities that provide educational resources such as books, libraries, museums, and opportunities for civic engagement accrue important learning advantages.  The literacy environment for many of the students that I met in Argentina does not easily support the opportunities to engage networked media as makers rather than consumers of information.  According to the Director, eighty percent of the students in the school had never owned a computer.  The students did not take their netbooks home, in part, because they do not have internet access at home.  Conditions like these further diminish their opportunity to cultivate digital literacies informally and in the peer-to-peer learning ecologies that encourage exploration and experimentation.  Transforming schools and the learning that happens there is not simply about what happens in between the four walls of the school building.  It is also about what happens in the larger social ecology that kids navigate and the extent to which other nodes in their network support learning across multiple sites, both formally and informally.

3.  Transforming schooling and literacy in edge communities.  The ultimate challenge is building a curriculum that develops and realizes a broader vision and mission for literacy in edge communities.  The school I toured focuses on lower-order computing skills, that is, teaching students to use some of the most basic applications available on their notebooks.  But beyond this basic literacy is the need to support a vision that defines digital literacy as a life skill that is connected to the everyday lives and situations of students and their families and communities.  Call it ‘design literacy,’ that is, the capacity to engage in higher-order thinking, critical thinking, and real-world problem solving.  Whereas ‘tools literacy’ is foundational, ‘design literacy’ is transformational.

Argentina is one country among many in South America that is mobilizing a renewed commitment to educating young people.  While their notion of digital literacy must certainly evolve it is refreshing to see countries that are investing in the future by funding new educational initiatives today.

At one point we began to talk about how the current economic crisis is impacting public education.  At a time when schools, especially low-performing schools, need to be embracing the opportunities that new technologies afford we see historic budget cuts happening all across the nation.  There are genuine fears that an already struggling public school system will be degraded even further by dramatic cuts that include massive teacher layoffs, higher student to teacher ratios in the classroom, and  a retreat from innovative learning opportunities.

When you think about the future of students who live in poor and working class households the retreat from public education raises a number of serious questions about their preparation for a world that will demand higher-order thinking skills, technological fluency, and, quite simply, the ability to (re)learn. What is at stake?  Just as the importance of providing learning activities that enrich digital media literacies is increasing the ability of public schools to deliver those learning opportunities is decreasing.

In my conversation with Tina, I explained the dilemma  this way.  ”My concern is that as schools are now struggling with budget cuts, digital media and digital literacy is looked as a luxury as opposed to a necessity.”  I added, “I understand the enormous pressure that teachers and administrators are under, especially in the public school system. But we need to build a more compelling narrative that digital literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity.”

Here is the full post, “For At-Risk Youth, is Learning Digital Media a Luxury?”

*  Mind/Shift re-posted my piece that considers the potential for mobile media to close the learning divides that exist between low and middle income students, “Ignore the Potential of Mobile Learning, Risk Widening the Digital Divide.“

Over the four weeks I spent several hours with the students, attended some of the fieldtrips that were arranged for them, and followed the evolution of their games from mere ideas, sketches, and paper prototypes to playable demos. I observed how digital media, peer-to-peer learning ecologies,  student-centered processes, and immersive, open, and playful educational environments can transform the lives of schools and, most important, the lives of young learners.  There was a teacher who supervised the students during the day but this was not about him at all.  This was all about the students—they conducted the research, came up with the story ideas for their games, wrote the script, did the art work, programming, and group management that kept them on schedule.

The process was not perfect but it did open my eyes even further to the promise of what innovative learning spaces for ‘the young and the digital’ can look like.

Game Creation for Everyone

Though some of the students had experience creating games most of them had never designed a game which made the four-week project especially intriguing from a researcher’s perspective.  In my conversations with the students I learned that they had varied interests and career aspirations including writing novels, music production, accounting, international business, and, of course, game design. Many of them came from homes with parents who had never attended college, underscoring important class dynamics.  While a few of them were college bound most were unsure about life after high school.

By the end of the first two days the students had created a company, established five separate teams, and crafted what would become their distinct yet flexible roles (i.e., artists, designer, programmer) within those teams.  After touring the AMD campus the students immediately went to work sketching, examining the photos they captured, discussing the notes that they took, probing the rationale of green architecture, and sharing ideas about the nature and design of their games.   In the first week students went from ideation to building their games.  After considering a number of options four of the five teams selected GameSalad as the platform for making their game.

Many of the students told me that GameSalad offered something unique compared to other options: customization.  Whereas other platforms restrict your characters and the game setting to pre-set features GameSalad allows you to create your own characters and setting.  Based in Austin, GameSalad represents one of the interesting developments in games—the creation of game authoring software that allows non-programmers to produce games.  “Not everybody can write code,” a rep from the company told me.  GameSalad’s motto while spunky in spirit—“Game creation for everyone”— highlights the rising interest among young people in not only playing games but making games.   Look beyond Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft and you might see the next great frontier in games.  The rise of platforms that encourage gamers to reimagine the world by telling stories, developing their learner voices, and problem-solving through game creation.

Even though GameSalad was the platform of choice none of the students had ever used the software.  Facing a hard four-week deadline the lack of experience with Game Salad could have led to frustration and resignation.  But this is when things got interesting.

‘Need to Know’ Learning Communities

The project was set up as a quasi-competition.  Only one team would have their game selected to be featured on AMD’s website.  But rather than turn against each other the students turned the classroom into an open and collaborative work space.  If one team member figured out a feature on GameSalad she shared it with the other teams.  If one team was uncertain about a game play feature they invited someone from a different team to play-test the game and used that as feedback.  If one person needed help figuring out Garage Band or Photo Shop someone with experience offered assistance.   Intuitively, they were building a design thinking system on the fly but it turns out that this is how many young people navigate and build rich learning ecologies, what you might call a “need to know” learning community.

One young student, an aspiring accountant, was charged with being the programmer for his team.   “I was nervous,” Gregory told me, “because I had never used GameSalad.” When I asked him how he figured it out his answer was eye-opening.  After talking with other students Gregory went to YouTube. (Early on the students petitioned their teacher to have the world’s biggest video-sharing site unblocked—“schools need to stop blocking YouTube!” one young woman told me.  “They need to stop being afraid of technology.”)  On YouTube he found several GameSalad tutorials and began studying them carefully.  Gregory was building an extended, virtual, and personal learning network, charting a pathway to learn what he needed to know in order to do what he needed to do.  “If you had given me a manual and said, ‘here, learn how to do this,’ it would have taken me two months to figure it out,” he explained.

Like a number of his peers Gregory jumped in and began tinkering with the game creation platform.  Within two weeks he had built the basic frame for the game.  As the main character your goal was to kill the invasive species that threatened AMD’s attempt to preserve the native plant species that populated the land that hosted their 58-acre complex.

Games, Grit, and Motivating Learning

A number of the students displayed what elsewhere Angela L. Duckworth et al. (2007) call grit.  In a 2007 study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology the authors conclude that grit, or perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is just as important in academic achievement as talent or high test scores.   But grit usually happens when students are motivated to learn.  Education scholars have known for some time that students learn best when they want to learn.  Typically the motivation in school is extrinsic or determined by an external force.  Maybe it’s to score high on a standards test, please a teacher, or do better than the student sitting next to you.  The best source of motivation is intrinsic, that is, students learning because they are internally driven, curious, and passionate about what they are doing.  Grit is more likely to be sustained in learning environments that figure out how to foster intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation by tapping into passions and allowing students to find their voice and place as learners.

By their own admission many of these students were not the most talented in their school but in this instance it would have been difficult to find students working any harder, longer, or smarter.

Earlier this week National Public Radio’s “Tell Me More” aired a conversation that I shared with Tony Cox about the digital divide. We talked about the ways in which the digital divide is evolving and how the shifting digital media terrain, especially the steady adoption of technology by a growing diversity of young people, is redefining how we think about issues related to technology, diversity, and equity.

I am exploring these issues in a series of new projects that I will be reporting on over the next year.  The projects are designed to examine the digital media lives of diverse young people and how, among other things, their adoption of media technologies are redefining what it means to be a young learner or citizen.

After I explained that the emerging challenges around digital media are more about quality of engagement, particpation, and expanding the pathways to digital media literacy among a greater diversity of young people, Tony asked me, “What can be done to get more people involved in myriad ways of using the Internet and digital media?”  Here is my response:

WATKINS: It seems to me that the richest and most promising attempts to do this are really kind of happening in the informal learning spaces. So they’re happening in after-school programs, they’re happening in the summer camps, summer workshops, which is interesting and raises a whole other set of questions about why schools aren’t able to provide these kinds of opportunities.

But I think it’s happening right through community, technology leaders. I think it’s happening through social entrepreneurs who have decided, right, that these issues are so important that the digital divide today is really about digital literacy, right, and how do we begin to create environments, create spaces that encourage and support kids’ ability to develop the kinds of digital media skills that they will need in the 21st century in what I call kind of islands of kind of innovation, right?

It’s happening, you know, maybe in a couple places, you know, here or there. I’m seeing it in Washington, D.C. I’m seeing it in Oakland, here in Austin, in Chicago. I mean it’s happening in a variety of places, but it doesn’t seem to be, right, a kind of cohesive or kind of coherent effort. But one that’s kind of scattered across different communities driven primarily by visionaries, driven primarily by social entrepreneurs who have decided that it is a space that they want to step into, a space that, again, schools have been inadequate in servicing.

You can read or listen to our entire conversation here.

As far back as 2007 data started to emerge that suggested that black and Latino households were much more likely to go online via a mobile phone than a desktop or laptop computer.  We are also learning that a surging number of poor households are choosing to go with a mobile phone over a landline, largely because they cannot afford both. My fieldwork is consistently suggesting that the future of black and Latinos digital lives are linked, for better or worse, to mobile devices.   The growing appeal of the mobile phone among African Americans and Latinos has not gone unnoticed by the press.  In fact, several news outlets have even reported that mobile phones may be closing the digital divide.  Is this true?   Is there any evidence, empirical or anecdotal, that mobile is closing the digital divide?

The answer to that question depends on how you define the digital divide.  For example, if you define the digital divide as largely a question of access to technology than the answer, arguably, is yes.  Internet capable phones, to the degree that poor and working class communities can afford them, certainly bridge the access gap.  In 2009 the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that African Americans were more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to go online via a mobile phone.  But what if you define the divide in terms of participation rather than access?  Is it possible that mobile devices are reproducing some of America’s most enduring inequalities?  Truth is, there are some large gaps in our knowledge that make answering this last question difficult. But here is a start.

Much of the empirical data over the last three to four years consistently suggests that when it comes to using their mobile devices to play games, watch video, listen to music, or manage their online social networks that black and Latino youth are much more active than their white and Asian American counterparts.  Nielsen recently reported that African Americans are thirty percent more likely to visit Twitter than any other racial or ethnic group.  We began reporting two years ago that black and Latino teens were using Twitter largely via their mobile phones.

It is unclear what kinds of phones black and Latino teens from low-income and working class homes are adopting.  Are they more likely to own smart phones or feature phones?  The functionalities of the former afford powerful social, recreational, and informational opportunities while the capabilities of the latter are much more limited.  And while we know that black and Latino youth have turned to mobile as a source of anytime, anywhere media does this mean that they are largely consumers rather than creators of content?

As we begin to learn more about the media ecologies of black and Latino teens an inevitable question arises: is there any evidence that their engagement with media technology is producing behaviors and learning outcomes that might impact the academic achievement gap?  There is an abundance of evidence that suggests that the informal learning environment (i.e., leisure, extracurricular and enrichment opportunities) of middle income students is just as important as the formal environment (i.e., schools) in their academic achievement.

The academic achievement gap takes root in early childhood and is related to the formal and informal learning ecologies that kids navigate throughout life.  Different parenting practices and household resources mean that middle income kids enter kindergarten with richer language skills and greater exposure to books than their low-income counterparts. Throughout schooling these early learning divides expand. What role, if any, do digital and mobile media platforms play in America’s learning divides?

The issue, of course, is not that young people’s adoption of mobile phones causes an achievement gap that began long before any of us ever heard of the Internet or mobile phones.  Rather, what is the potential for learning and engagement with mobile media in closing the learning divides that exist between low and middle income students?  The mere adoption of mobile phones is certainly not the solution to the achievement gap.  Technology—social network sites, laptops, smart phones, games, tablets, interactive books and maps—alone will never close America’s learning divide.  This is the myth of the “digital native” narrative, the notion that youth can thrive in the digital world without any adult support, mentoring, or scaffolding of rich learning experiences.  While a greater diversity of young people are using digital and mobile platforms than ever before not all media ecologies are equal.  Thus it’s very possible that if poor and working class students adopt technologies like mobile phones in environments that do not offer adult engagement and scaffolding the potential benefits in terms of learning and empowerment may not be realized.

Currently, I’m involved in a series of case studies that examine how adult educators and mentors are creating innovative learning experiences that encourage young people, for example, to view their mobile device as a powerful data collection resource and gateway to cultivating new literacies and forms of civic engagement.  What I see is promising in terms of igniting young minds and young citizens. While only a small percentage of young people are using mobile devices as a powerful learning tool today the percentage is growing.  The real challenge is not if rich and meaningful mobile learning ecologies will develop.  As a 2011 NMC Horizon report shows, they already exist.  Rather, the real question is, will they be distributed in ways that close or maintain America’s learning divide?

During the conference Justice O’Connor expressed concerns about the poor state of civic education today and the implications for our democratic future.   At one point the  Justice joked, “when you ask students what is the Declaration of Independence, they do not know the answer…and the answer is in the title of the document!”

Like many other challenges that our society will face educating for democracy will have to grapple with the social and technological transitions that are remaking the very fabric of American life.  Notions of civic literacy, that is, what students should know about the American democratic experiment have evolved as a result of various social, political, cultural, and economic pressures.  David Tyack and Larry Cuban write that throughout much of the early 20^th century educators, “tried to transform immigrant newcomers and other “outsiders” into individuals who matched their idealized image of what an ‘American’ should be.” Historically, civic education targeted toward immigrant, non-English speaking, or racially and ethnically diverse students has been designed to construct loyal, obedient, and patriotic citizens.  In the wake of the 1960s and 1970s uprisings around racial and sexual equality civic education—especially issues like who and what topics should be included in civic and history textbooks—began to reflect the push for greater inclusion and diversity in our civic imagination.

While teaching students about the structure and distinct functions of our three branches of government is important the scope of civic education must grapple with the historic shifts that are remaking our nation’s student body.

Some of the most striking trends documented by the 2010 U.S. census are the profound population transitions happening among young Americans.  Since 2000 Latinos, Asians, and immigrants drove nearly all of the population growth in U.S., according to the census.  In California roughly half of the age eighteen and under population is Latino.  Enrollment data from the Texas Education Agency reports that for the first time ever half of the state’s public school population is Latino.  Two of every three public school children in Texas are non-white. Another stunning census finding: for the first time in America’s history fewer than half of three-year-olds are white.  These and other social transitions illuminate how the nation’s student body is changing and why civic education, in order to remain relevant, must evolve too.  As William Frey of The Brookings Institution notes, “these shifts in the racial and ethnic profiles of our child population…present both opportunities and challenges.” This is certainly true in education and raises the questions, what should civic education in U.S. schools look like in an age of social and technological change?

Traditional civic education has required students to memorize basic facts about American government, call it the what, who, and when model for civic literacy.  The primary source of information has been textbooks, a source of literacy that has not always been the most accurate or inclusive.  And while books (in various forms) will certainly continue to play a role in civic education emerging digital media platforms will be key in the effort to engage, invigorate, and create an informed citizenry. The rise of digital media offers a unique opportunity to add a more experiential dimension to civic education.  Digital technologies can, of course, be used to teach kids basic civic facts but they can also serve as an entry point into “doing” civics. This happened in a Minneapolis third grade class that I visited earlier this year.

During my visit I noticed that a student was using iCivics. When I asked her what she was doing it took her a while to respond.  She was too busy playing the game.  In this particular case iCivics was providing a game-based lesson about the rights of individuals to challenge laws or practices that they believed were unfair.  It was an especially appropriate module for the class considering what had happened the previous year.

When I asked the young girl’s teacher, Mr. Sinha*, why he used iCivics to teach his third graders civic education he told me that it was an engaging way to connect kids to the key participatory principles of democracy in a way that was culturally relevant—games—and likely to have impact—experiential learning.  He knew from personal experience that some of his students were weaving some of the lessons they learned from iCivics about democracy, citizenship, and rights into their lives.  One episode that he shared with me was a powerful example of how civic education through digital media can register real and discernible impact in young people’s learning.

While teaching a unit in social studies about Rights and Responsibilities Mr. Sinha was struck by a student claim.  “We have a right to technology in the classroom,” said the third grade student.  When Mr. Sinha challenged the student’s expectation to technology in the classroom he explained that the various tools that they used—laptops, Nintendo DS, voice recorders, digital storytelling programs, online games, etc.—were not legally mandated. In fact, he used his own resources to acquire many of the devices that the students were using in class.  Mr. Sinha saw a teaching moment. “Realizing that such a right was not in the actual law, and knowing that historically, no rights were ever actually acquired or appreciated until they were lost or acquired through a struggle, I proceeded to remove all of the technology in the room soon after he said that,” the third grade teacher told me.  What ensued was a real life lesson about civics.

The students, Mr. Sinha noted, were absolutely incensed with his decision and argued that it interfered with their learning and the goal that he had set for them to end the year at the fifth grade level.  The next day one student introduced a petition against Mr. Sinha.  Where did the idea for this kind of civic engagement come from?  Mr. Sinha believes that it was based on her knowledge from playing iCivics games and other readings they had done in class.  That evening the young girl shared her concerns with her parents and with their help crafted a petition to win back the “right” to have technology in the classroom.

The next day in class other students helped to edit the draft before submitting it to Mr. Sinha.  Confident that he had made his point, the teacher relented and brought back the tools his students had come to expect as part of their learning.  Since integrating social, mobile, and digital media in the classroom he had personally witnessed how technology engaged students and made learning relevant, immersive, and impactful.

Through interactive play, games, and simulation a group of third grade students began to develop a much richer, personal, and communal understanding of civic education and engagement.  Since that experience the students have posted the petition on the class website to make their case that access to technology in the classroom should be a right for all students.  Local reporters and state officials have visited the class and now a local debate about technology and learning is gaining a bit of momentum.

And just think; it all started with a group of third graders playing a game that helped them to reimagine what learning and doing civic education could be.

* All names in this piece are pseudonyms.

Anyone who has even a pedestrian understanding of social movements knows that they are often caused by the convergence of social, economic, cultural, and political factors.  And this is certainly true in the Arab world. Decades of government corruption, elite economic self-interest, the arrogance of power,  and historic economic inequalities were the primary catalyst for what Newsweek magazine called, “a youthquake that is rocking the Arab world.” A recent tweet by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is subtle but profound: “We cannot in good conscience continue to reward the rich, penalize the poor, and ignore the middle. There will be a day of reckoning.”  While Reich was referring to the current political and economic climate in the U.S. the tweet speaks to the wider global condition. While social media was not the catalyst of the Egyptian protest it was certainly a tool for mobilizing protest.

The five million Facebook accounts in Egypt make it the second most popular site in the country.  YouTube is the third most visited site.  Whereas protestors used Facebook  to organize, set dates, and “peercast,” that is, share mobile pictures and video with peers Twitter became the social media backbone of the movement’s day-to-day machinations.

I recently had a chance to speak with a young man who made Tahrir Square his home during parts of the uprising.

Karim (this is a pseudonym) studies social media and told me that he felt like he was participating in history.  On February 5 he sent me a number of pictures from his Facebook album that captured various aspects of the massive demonstrations in Egypt.  The pictures, of course, had an ethnographic aesthetic about them and offer a much more intimate perspective of the movement than did the highly selected images most people viewed on television.  The Facebook album included pictures of people protesting, confronting the police, nurturing the wounded, laughing, celebrating, and, most important, bonding together in a common cause to transform their country. In many of the pictures (see Photo 1) I also noticed people capturing the protest with their mobile devices.

In literally thousands of instances they streamed pictures, videos, tweets, and Facebook updates for their comrades around Egypt and the world.  This kind of media production is a hallmark feature of the digital media age.  Egyptian protestors were not only consuming images of their efforts, they were also producing and sharing those images with the world and giving new meaning to the notion of participatory politics.

Karim explained the popularity of photos this way.  “As you might know, sometimes these demonstrations are not safe; so, as soon as we reach Tahrir Square, we take photos of the demonstration and upload them to our Facebook profiles to tell our friends that we are participating and encourage them to come over.”

Curious about the adoption of technology in the uprisings , I asked Karim how did social media influence the events in Egypt.  Karim replied that, “the demonstration started on January 25 and the call for it was done mainly through Facebook.”  Facebook emerged, in part, as an efficient way to coordinate and organize protestors.  The first Facebook post related directly to the events in February was made on January 14 at 11:18 pm, eleven days before the first massive protests in Tahrir Square.  The main tag simply read: رسالة إلى شعب مصر: ليكن 25 يناير هو شعلة التغيير في مصر.  (Rough)Translation: “Message to the people of Egypt: Let the January 25 is the torch of change in Egypt.”

According to Karim, social media was crucial from the outset of the movement because it gave people on the ground an information technology that they could control. “Because of the government’s heavy control over all the traditional media,” he explained, “the Internet is the only available option for all opposition parties and movements.” That is also why after two days of protest the government shut down the internet and mobile phone service.  Determined to keep the momentum people used everything from dial-up modems to proxy-servers.

The first and what will likely go down in history as one of the most famous Twitter hashtag’s in the Egyptian revolution was “#jan25,” created by a twenty-one year-old woman who goes by the Twitter name, @alya1989262.  Follow the “#jan25” feed (created January 15, one day after the above Facebook announcement) and one of the most striking features is the range and complexity of communication that took place via Twitter.  In many ways, Twitter became the mediated eyes, ears, and voice of the day-to-day life of the protest.

#jan25 is, in essence, a transcript of history, a log not merely of what people were tweeting, but what they were thinking and, most important, doing.  Twitter was used in a variety of ways during the protest.  At times it was used as a tool for real time communication betwen protesters, informing each other about the location of police, where protestors should go, and what media around the world were saying about the events on the ground.  According to @alya1989262, Twitter, “most importantly, allow[ed] us to share on the ground info like police brutality, things to watch out for, activists getting arrested, etc.”

Twitter was also used to rally, recruit, and encourage people to come out and show their solidarity with the protestors.  In other instances it was used as a broadcast medium, a technology that allowed the protesters to tell their side of the story, their side of history.  In societies were freedom of the press is severely constrained and the press is often the mouthpiece of the government, social media emerges as an alternative broadcasting platform, a way to communicate and connect with the world.  There is historical precedence for this.

In the 1960s leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement came to understand the power of television and how the images of police brutality turned the tide against the state sanctioned southern hostility toward freedom fighters and their demands for political equality.  In the student led movement against the Vietnam War chants like “the whole world is watching” revealed an effort to leverage the power of television to mobilize widespread support for their social movement.  By staying connected to Twitter the protestors in Egypt were also able to track how well their efforts were trending beyond home.  What did they see?  The whole world really was watching them but this time on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms in addition to television. @alya1989262 acknowledged this, “Twitter trends also help us gauge how visible we are to the international community.” What makes social movements in the age of social media so distinct is the real time nature of communication in the execution of protest as well as the ability to share perspectives, narratives, and experiences that establish an ambient connection to the outside world.

As we gain a better understanding of what happened in Egypt and other parts of the Arab world we will also learn more about who used mobile devices and social media to energize their efforts to create democratic freedoms.  Karim contends that, “the youth who called for the first demonstration on January 25 belong to upper middle class in Egypt and most of them, if not all, have Internet access.” @alya1989262’s account is similar.  “A certain class of activists are armed with smartphones, which allow them to live-tweet the protests.”  Does this suggest that the movement was ignited by a generation of tech savvy and college educated citizens?  Not necessarily.  But the idea of this segment rising up to confront power is not all that surprising when you consider their condition.  Roughly a third of the population in the middle east is under thirty and a noteworthy percentage of them have college degrees.  The young and the digital in the middle east are connected to the world in a way that previous generations could not even have imagined.  And yet, the unemployment rate of young college educated persons in the middle east is staggeringly high.  A recent report from NPR notes that 40% of young persons with college degrees in Saudia Arabia, for example, are unemployed.  Faced with the prospects of a life with few if any meaningful opportunities to utilize their cultural capital—education—many young people realized that they had nothing to lose by confronting the Mubarak regime.

What happened in Egypt is yet another confirmation of what our research has consistently demonstrated regarding young people’s engagement with social media: young people use social media not as a substitute for face-to-face interactions with their peers and the world but rather as a complement. Young people in Egypt did not use social media to avoid gathering with each other or to passively participate in their country’s revolution.  They used it to encourage gathering with each other for the expressed purpose of actively participating in the revolution.  Twitter and Facebook did not start the revolution but they did help generations of Egyptians realize a world that not that long ago would have been impossible to imagine.

In fact, the story of the most successful social media platforms is how they evolve far beyond what their creators initially intended. Facebook, once a place to connect with collegiate friends, is also used to connect to social causes, organizations, and pop culture interests.  In places like Tunisia and Egypt the political elite are blocking access to social media because it has become an alternative media tool for sharing with the world the unrest in those respective countries.  Updating the design features of these platforms so that they remain relevant and flexible enough to matter in people’s lives is a constant challenge not because the creators define the social uses of social media but precisely for the opposite reason–how everyday users adopt and innovate with social media continually redefines their meaning.

What is Social Changes as We Change

The data in our survey offers compelling evidence that Facebook is evolving into a multi-facted platform connecting with nearly every aspect of our social selves.  And while that makes some traditionalists uncomfortable it is a fact of life in the digital age.  What remains to be seen is how users of Facebook will innovate in the face of “network convergence “a reference to what happens when the varied social connections that reflect our varied selves are connected to each other through online social networks. It is a mistake to assume that active engagement with social media means disengagement with offline friends and acquaintances.  In fact, all of the data that we have been collecting over the last six years strongly suggest otherwise.

Even before conducting our study we understood that the use of social media is constantly evolving in relation to several factors including age, education, gender, geography, race and ethnicity. In our earlier work we noticed that teens used social network sites primarily as a destination and opportunity to get away from the controlling gaze of parents, teachers, and other authority figures.  My colleagues Mimi Ito and Heather Horst were part of a MacArthur Foundation funded study a few years ago that found that teens’ use of social media is actually quite layered, complex, and, yes, social.  For most teens social networks are primarily about two things–crafting a social identity and connecting to a peer community.  Despite popular opinion how teenagers use social media is not a predictor of how they will use social media in later years.  In our early research we came across evidence that marked some important transitions in the use of social media after high school.

In our research young adults’ rejection of online social networks as a place to hang out illuminates the social and behavioral changes that accompany the transition from teen to young adulthood.  First, whereas teens, due primarily to age and the school week, face a number of restrictions on their personal mobility, young adults enjoy more personal freedoms and mobility.  Second, young adults also exercise more control over their free time.   Third, unlike teens young adults do not suffer from what sociologist Ray Oldenburg refers to as “the problem of place,” a reference to the steady erosion of informal public life and places for friends to gather socially.  Young adults gather together in all kinds of places including parties, dorm rooms, coffee shops, fitness classes, and bars.

Facebook Photos Define Social Outward Rather Than Downward

At its core our study explores one question: what is social about social media?  Social behavior, as it always does, continues to evolve.  Social media expands our opportunities to engage friends, family, acquaintances, and the world around us.  Several indicators of sociability emerge from our work but I will focus on one–the posting and browsing of pictures.  When we talk with young people (and this increasingly applies to the millions of 35+ users of Facebook) browsing photos consistently emerges as a major part of the Facebook experience. According to Facebook its more than 500 million users worldwide share about 30 billion pieces of content–pictures, web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, etc.–a month.

Turkle observes that, “you can be pro-photo sharing without being convinced that it expands our social lives,” adding, “It’s a way of defining downwards what it means to be social.” Rather than dismiss photo sharing as defining social behavior downward I prefer to think of it as defining social behavior outward.

Not only is the sharing of pictures social– I call it “lifesharing”– but many of the pictures that people post on Facebook often capture activities that are social in nature–friends hanging out together at parties, athletic events, and sharing meals and drinks together. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in our study say that the photos that they post are of social gatherings with friends.  More than half, 55%, say that the photos that they post are of family-based events.  It’s true, a growing percentage of the pictures shared on Facebook are of family related activities including weddings, vacations, and reunions.

The pictures that users post and what they elect to share tell intriguing stories about who they are and also who they aspire to be.  As I think about our research the posting and browsing of pictures via Facebook is a complex social activity that intersects with many of the current debates about social media in general and Facebook in particular– issues like privacy, publicity, identity, performance, personal expression, narcissism, and prosumption (i.e., people producing and consuming cultural content) just to name a few.

We also have a bit of data on when people are most likely to be on Facebook and our preliminary analysis suggest that it’s usually during the periods they are unlikely to physically be with friends–early in the morning or late during a weekday evening.  (We will need to think more carefully about this as Facebook mobile now means Facebook anytime and anywhere). Pictures spark conversations and fond feelings that can pull a close social circle of friends even closer together or help distant friends and family feel connected even though they may be far away.

I don’t see evidence that Facebook is making us anti-social or that its use is defining social behavior downward.  I do see evidence that users are adopting the platforms features to expand how we express our social selves.

Click this link, “Got Facebook?,” to see our study.