Creating an Enclosed Social Network

One of the misconceptions about virtual schools is that students miss out on the social interactions that occur in a traditional brick and mortar school. That is undeniably true. There is no way to replicate the social experience of a face-to-face school in the virtual environment. That's not to say that virtual school students have no social life. Most of my students get plenty of social interaction, they just don't get it at school. Instead, they join community organizations, 4-H clubs, church youth groups, performing arts organizations or club sports teams. They do volunteer work or work for pay. And yes, they still have other friends who they interact with both in person and online.

That said, surveys we have done with our virtual school students show that many of them do appreciate opportunities to interact with their classmates. We sponsor some in-person events, but because our students are located throughout the state, it is rarely possible to get them all together in one place. A student from Hayward will probably not attend a pizza party in Kenosha, so even though students from those two locations may be in many of the same classes, they are not likely to meet face-to-face until graduation day.

So the question becomes what can the school do to facilitate social interaction between students that are geographically separated? Technology based social interaction is nothing new to middle and high school students. We could simply encourage all our students to connect with each other using a platform that already exists (like Facebook or text messaging), but some parents object to their children being on Facebook and some of our students are under the minimum Facebook age of 13. The solution we came up with a few years ago was an enclosed social network that we called iQuad. It was hosted on the Ning platform which, at the time, was free to use. The site was very popular because not only could students share messages, pictures and videos with students in their own school, but also with students at sister virtual schools throughout the country. That experiment came to a screeching halt when Ning announced they would no longer host the site for free and we had no budget to pay for it.

For my project, I want to create a new, enclosed social network for my students to "hang out" and interact with one another - sort of like a common area or cafeteria at a brick and mortar school. The site should be similar to Facebook in that it should allow students to have converations, post updates, share pictures, links and videos, etc. Unlike Facebook, it would need to be password protected so only eAchieve Academy students can participate in order to allay the concerns of parents. The site would also have to be monitored for appropriate content since it will be school-sponsored.

Creating an enclosed social network for virtual school students won't replace the social interactions that happen in brick and mortar schools, but it will provide a safe, controlled environment where they can get to know one another and feel more like classmates.