There are two salient points that need to be made here: 1. The blocks are largely ineffective since those who wish to get around them can; and 2. The education of Chinese and foreign students here is being deleteriously affected. I want to direct my comments to the second point.

There are tens of thousands of classrooms throughout China which are using social media and networking as a focal point of curriculum delivery. I read recently that all upper primary to secondary students at the Shanghai American School, for example, are required to  blog. I have educated my students in the educational, organizational, research, and collaborative uses of media such as blogs, wikis, Facebook and Twitter. Almost daily, I am discovering new ways to use these tools, and my students are optimally engaged in classroom discussions and projects. I have seen research improve, writing acumen has grown exponentially, ownership and involvement in our discipline is as high or higher than it’s ever been. Needless to say, my students are upset by the recent actions.

No more can I use YouTube as an introduction to a topic, a jumping off point for a discussion, or uploading of student work. I’ve had to move student blogs from Blogger to WordPress to Ning, and now they’re all blocked. Some of my students were highly involved in expanding their research network on Twitter, but now they’re stifled. Facebook, for creating class and student groups and their corresponding content, and wikis are still available, but I really believe they will be blocked in the near future as well. My options: a) abandon the use of these tools–which I will not do; b) use a proxy server, which we’re now doing in a limited fashion, but it’s quite awkward; or c) set up my own server, which could be costly and labor intensive.

Ultimately, I would not have to make this choice if officials would carefully consider the long-term consequences of their policies. Hopefully, the powers that be will realize that the blocks are causing more damage than they are assisting them in their aims. Until then, I’ll have to continue to be resourceful.

Photo by s myers

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Mashable reports that last month’s unique visitors numbers indicate that Facebook and Twitter continue on their torrid growth pace, while MySpace continues to lose ground.

Facebook’s growth, both in terms of the number of users, as well as visitors, has to slow down one day. Well, it is slowing down now, but it’s still huge given how big Facebook already is. Compete’s numbers for April show that Facebook has grown from 91,000,000 to 104,000,000 unique visitors, a healthy 14.35% increase from March.

Twitter, on the other hand, has looked tiny compared to these services mere months ago. Now it can definitely be put on the same graph, but to show its stellar growth I’ve given it a graph of its own. The growth has slowed down somewhat; the number of unique visitors has grown from 14,000,000 to 19,000,000, which is 38,56% growth.

I do most of my personal learning and information gathering in the following ways:

• aggregating feeds of interest into my Google Reader
• receiving news alerts of interest on educational and other topics into Google Reader
• searching for articles of interest in Digg
• Facebook–I get lots of good info from my friends, including video which is right on the page
• blogging–this is by far my most professionally valuable activity as it compels me to do research, consider issues, and basically get it right
• Ning groups

For personal and classroom collaboration, I recommend:

• Ning–create your own customized classroom or school network. A one-stop shop for much of what you’ll want to do.
• An online docs sharing network such as Google docs (not preferred due to formatting issues) or, better yet, Box.net
• Twitter (if it’s fully functional)
• Google suite of tools, including Google Docs, Google Sites, etc.
• Email still works
• Ustream for live presentations
• Slideshare for slideshows
• Class blogs for reflection and information
• Class wikis for gathering and making sense of information

Thoughts?