Beware of The Creepy Treehouse

I had a very interesting conversation with a member of the audience after my Learn Live session at BETT yesterday who brought my attention to the concept of The Creepy Treehouse. This is a term that has been around, it would seem, for a few years and it refers to attempts by institutions and figures of authority to either replicate online social communities for an educational audience (such as Edmodo) or where young people are required to use online spaces such as Facebook or Twitter for educational purposes.

The issue was discussed by Professor Jason B. Jones of Central Connecticut State University back in March 2010 and he and undergraduate Alex Jarvis came up with the following advice for avoiding the Creepy Treehouse.

“Be transparent.  Explain why it’s required, what students will be graded on, etc.  Explain the tool’s ownership and logistics.  If you’ve set up a class Twitter account, consider sharing it with at least some students.Encourage self-organization.  There’s no need for you to create that Facebook group!  Let them do it.  (In my experience, Facebook groups I’ve created haven’t gotten much participation, but ones students have created about my classes have often gone well.Deputize worthwhile ad-hoc groups.  This encourages the perception–which hopefully is accurate!–that the class’s social media usage is bottom-up, and not top-down. Be nimble.  Notice how students are interacting with your course material, and put resources where they feel most comfortable.”

These all appear to be good pieces of advice for those engaging with students on social media but I challenge how much of a constraint this should be for schools.

First of all the concept itself has rather sinister connotations. It sounds like the name of one of those terrible American horror movies or the sequel to Hansel and Gretal. It suggests that students are suspicious in some ways of the intentions that teachers may have in interacting with them online. Social media already ignite some polarised opinions and this kind of sentiment would add great weight to the argument that schools shouldn’t go anywhere near this kind of thing. For those of us who already use social media in an educational setting it is also rather offensive.

Secondly the concept has now been around for about 5 years and I would argue that social media have moved on quite significantly in that time. 5 years ago I would probably have flinched at the idea of using Facebook for any kind of educational reason and would understand people’s reservations of encouraging adults and students connecting in this way. But social media are now quite a central part of many people’s lives and are used in a variety of ways.

Social media are no longer solely used by people to socialise. Many people use social media to connect to friends but increasing numbers also use social media to network, share ideas and collaborate in the workplace. As Ken Robinson says in Out of our Minds “new technologies are revolutionizing the nature of work everywhere”. If young people will be expected to engage with social media in the world of work when they leave school or university then surely schools need to be engaging with them at the point that they are learning how to use these tools, otherwise they will be unprepared, which could have some fairly disastrous consequences. Young people need to learn that they can interact with their friends on Facebook but one day they might also be expected to interact with their boss on Facebook or liaise with clients on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The social aspects of social media do not constrain themselves to socialising but should relate instead to the opportunites they create for interaction and collaboration which have more far-reaching potential in the fields of education and work than the rather insipid and shallow communications which dominate most Facebook walls of Twitter timelines. Social media sites are also not restricted to Facebook and Twitter. All video sharing sites (YouTube, TED, Khan Academy, The Virtual School), collaborative file creation software (Google Docs, SkyDrive) and blogging sites (Blogger, Wordpress) would also come under the social media umbrella and I’d like to meet the person that could convince me that these are not specifically aimed at education.

If we leave social media alone and concede that they are purely spaces for young people to socialise with one another then we also have to concede that we accept cyber bullying and that there is no educational benefit of allowing students to access information and share ideas anytime, anywhere. If educators have any intentions of using social media interactions with young people for anything other than school-related matters then they deserve to face the same disciplinary measures that I would hope any safeguarding concerns would raise, but let’s not demonise social media with these rather emotive tags.