While reading chapter nine of our Richardson text this week, Social Networks: Facebook, Ning, Connections, and Communities, I was interested to learn of the existence of sites such as Ning.com, Kiva.org, and TakingItGlobal.org. I’ve maybe heard of Kiva somewhere along the way before, but I had never heard of the other two sites. Considering Facebook is a “social network,” and that apps like Instagram or Twitter are “social media,” it seems there is an aspect of the “social” that is missing. Often we use these media to promote ourselves and our viewpoints. To me, there is rarely great value in this.

As I teach with technology, I hope that I will be able to employ the sites listed above to get students to consider rhetoric and writing, but also to think about and engage with the world around them. Technology offers us many chances to engage with the problems we see in the world, tools to work on improving those conditions, and access to communities abroad and nearby – it would be a shame to use this powerful tool to focus only on our selves and immediate concerns.

Starting earlier on than I was considering, social-emotional learning aided by technology is discussed in EdTech’s article focused on elementary students. Teq also had ideas to encourage social learning in younger students.

My somewhat unfruitful and frustrating search for other socially conscious service learning-based sites or articles indicates that we have a way to go in the area. Combing “technology” “classroom” “service learning” “socially conscious” and similar concepts in various ways, I either found articles focusing on children, like those above, classroom projects that didn’t involve technology (The Conscious Classroom does offer food for thought and some springboards), or those that somehow construed the most pressing social problem we have to be helping businesses function better. *sigh*