Just started five years ago, Taiwan based Uschool (www.uschool.com.tw) has already found their recipe for success. Uschool essentially is Facebook for elementary school and junior high school students. Their secret to success lies within their strict target user base of 5-12 year olds. As to date about 80% of all elementary schools and junior high schools in Taiwan use Uschool as their official social-networking platform. The general idea is to create a safe online social-networking platform in which the teachers can use to bond with their students even when they are not at school. Uschool provides their services freely to schools where teachers can create an online class board and students can have their own little blog spaces. Parents can also register and essentially be involved in the happenings of their child’s education. Students are encouraged to utilize this online space for school and for social purposes.
In order to provide a safe and clean online space for children, all pages and blogs are filtered and removed when inappropriate context is found. Uschool enables students to still participate in online social-networks without the common worries that parents would have. Uschool strives to become the first social-networking platform that children will get to use. Because of their concentrated student user base with the older teachers and parents; Uschool is able to attract many advertisements and sponsorships (their main source of profit).
About three years ago Uschool has since branched to offshore countries such as China and Vietnam. In Shanghai about 50% of their elementary schools and junior high schools have already started using Uschool. Teachers were able to search for curriculums and teaching aids that were posted from each other thus improving their own teaching curriculums. Just last year the English equivalent of Uschool was launched in the US.
This was a very interesting example of how schools and parents are adjusting to the technology around them. Before it might have been easier for parents to just deny internet access to their children but that is no longer possible in today’s day and age. Uschool’s platform creates a great way for children to become familiar with online social-networking at a very young age as part of their ‘education’.
15 Comments
Hi Tracey! Very interesting article on social networks and children. I am wondering if in the future – when these kids turn 13 years old, they will remain in USchool or migrate to a different “adult” or “teenage” Social Network. Do children must be 5-12 years old to participate in USchool? Another possibility is that these children will create such a well connected social network with strong ties and they will never leave this site. It is amazing to observe how we are creating records and data of our early online life. I would love to go back to “archive.org” and see my thoughts when I was five!
Tracey,
Very interesting post. I was trying to find the US version of the site, but couldn’t find it. Is it already live?
It’s an excellent idea to guide children early on in how to use social networking sites, to make full use of its opportunities and to avoid its pitfalls.
I wonder like Raquel where they will go after USchool? Teens may not be as interested in such a tightly controlled environment and may baulk at sharing too much on a school-run site.
Raquel – I think Uschool actually have the children build their network around their time at school and once they graduate they graduate as well from Uschool. I read from the founder that they feel that once children become teenagers they tend to go searching for their own social networks online (specifically away from parental censorship). The good thing about Uschool is that they actually make a dvd out of the context that the children have shared so far so that children can have it upon graduation. A very good way like you said to have a ‘record’ as memory of earlier days.
Peter – the site for the US counter part is (http://www.uschoolnet.com/) however, I went through some of the King county elementary schools and found none that was in use. I wonder if there are any that we can look in to that are fully functioning.
But then again I don’t know enough of the children in the US to know how much they are involved in online social networking. From the children in Taiwan (that I have met) I do know that they become quite accustomed to the internet and online social networking at a very young age.
Wow! That is really awesome! Thank you for your response!
Great post!!
I believe a SNS will help children learn in the classroom. However, I also worry that children who access to the Internet may be addict to it too much. Are there any protection system for the kids?
It’ll be interesting to see how well uschoolnet.com will do in the U.S. Thanks for the response.
I like this post. It’s surprises me that Uschool is designed for children and it has become so successful. It’s great to see that people start to utilize SNS for education purpose rather than entertaining. I wonder if SNS sites will benefit the language learners. For example, the Japanese learners can talk to other children in Japan. This might help the language learners to learn the language in a native-speaker environment.
Pei – I think the internet is not something parents can keep away from their children anymore. Even if they are to be addicted it seems the only way to even salvage the situation is to at least direct them in a more proper way of utilizing the internet as a good tool rather than just entertainment.
Peter – I tried searching for an US example but failed. Maybe I should just email Uschool in Taiwan and ask them directly.. 8D
Yenching – There are actually various platforms that give this service of language learning. I had felt it is very smart of Uschool to target such a young crowd. Parents most likely are willing to pay to keep their children on the right track.
There are social networking sites for children that are popular in the US. Most have merchandise attached – Webkinz, Neopets, Beanie 2.0 – or are extensions of media companies such as Disney’s Club Penguin or Disney Extreme Digital and Nickelodeon’s Nicktropolis.com. But none of these are educational.
Locally, the Seattle School District launched The Source, which doesn’t have social networking, but does has a component to allow school classes to have their own websites. It’s disappointingly little-used.
Of course, many websites are blocked on classroom computers (in the classrooms that have computers); in addition, cell phones and other network-enabled devices are not allowed in most classrooms (not that many elementary students have cell phones.) So hardware and Internet access provide basic limitations to use.
It will be interesting to see how this changes, if at all, in the next couple years. Will school districts scrounge up money somehow to provide more access? Will teachers welcome this, or will they view it as one more distraction that students have to filter?
Hi Tracey,
Thanks so much for your article. I’m currently researching the potential, explicit educational value of SNSs for elementary students in the U.S. so your article is perfectly timed. I’m wondering, where did you get your statistics and other information? I’d love to read some of the original material.
Thanks, Josh
Hi all invited
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