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if you take the time to review the judge's decision (PDF), you'll see that Synder's "unprofessionalism" that was cited in those reviews came from accusations that she exhibited "over-familiarity with her students," and "had difficulty maintaining a formal teaching manner."

Synder's real mistake in this situation was not knowing or choosing to turn on any sort of privacy controls on her social network profile page.

According to the New York Times Bits blog, a recent study funded by the US Department of Education (PDF) found that on the whole, online learning environments actually led to higher tested performance than face-to-face learning environments.

“In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages,” writes the authors of the report (emphasis theirs). “At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.”

We can conclude that those in online learning environments tested better, but not necessarily why.

This quote struck me on many levels. Specifically, the notion of being distracted in the "other features" seemed to be a loaded statement. Do students consider exploring outside the realm of what is defined as "learning" as a distraction? Isn't exploring different facets of an application just as important as using it for its intended purpose? This led me to consider how many educators have so poisoned students thinking that being "off-task" is even considered to be a bad thing. Have we so stymied students that they believe if they are not formally "learning," if they become "sidetracked," that they are wasting their time? When did curiosity become a negative thing? (When it killed the proverbial cat, I suppose.) As I think about it, if young adults find new media a distraction, then perhaps "learning" has become too narrowly defined. This then led me to wonder how we can "measure" self-directed learning in this new media context? In other words, how can we show the different levels of learning that takes place in these new contexts?