It was a good day...

I finally nailed down my 1st scholarly project description. I'll be evaluating the potential educational value of social networking sites at the elementary school level by developing a rubric of educational elements based on a survey of applicable high-quality learning principals. Each site will be judged against that rubric in determining to what degree a site exhibits those principals or has those elements. I should then be able to not only rank the sites, but make suggestions for increasing the educational value of each.

I understand that general-use sites like Facebook would generally not be allowed in an elementary, if any, classroom. However, Facebook and other popular SNSs will be included with school-safe versions like eChalk and SayWire, in order to determine their theoretical value and consider the full-set of possible features of such sites.

The first step in this process is a brief survey of the literature on the general social and personal value of SNSs, a value which is broader than simply being "educational," hence the review of the Ellison article. This also makes it clear to me that I'm going to have to define "educational" fairly narrowly. If you have any suggestions, I'm more than open to them.

Cheers...