Board of Education Social Media/Networking Discussion

On Thursday, March 10, 2011, sometime between 7-8:30 pm Mountain Time (depends on how the agenda goes), we will be having a discussion with our Board of Education surrounding Social Media/Social Networking and K-12 schools. Details are still to be ironed out, but we expect to host a web page with the presentation and a CoverItLive live blog session embedded side-by-side, and also plan to have a live stream that can be opened separately.

Update 3-7-11: Here's the page with the Cover-It-Live and the Prezi.

Some of the questions/issues we’re likely to address are:

What is social media/networking? How is it different? Why is it important?

What is the social value of social media/networking?

What are the realities and what are the myths? What are the risks and what are the benefits?

What are the organizational, communication, and learning power of these services?

How can these be used for learning and collaboration, not just echo-chamber and group think?

What is their role in K-12 education? (Note: I’m in high school, so that’s my focus, and I imagine most of the focus in this discussion will be age 13 and up, but thoughts on younger ages are welcome as well.)

What should Board policy look like surrounding social media/networking? Should there be policy? If so, should it be just for this, or should it fall under our current code of conduct and we don’t need a separate policy?

What should our Internet filter policy be for this? What about students that use their phones/own connection to the Internet while at school and therefore aren’t restricted by our filter?

We’ll use the hashtag #BoardChat

Proposed Prezi Presentation (First Draft 2-20-11, feedback to Dan Maas).

Please leave any thoughts you have about the above items – or additional related items not listed -in this Google Doc. Thanks in advance.

What Makes a Chat a Chat?

I had the opportunity last week to participate along with the amazing Jim Burke from English Companion in an Education Week/Teacher Magazine chat on Social Networking and Teacher Professional Development. I hope some people found it useful and I appreciate the folks at Education Week/Teacher Magazine that put this together. None of the rest of this post is meant to disparage those folks, but simply to ask the question: What makes a chat a chat?

We used CoverItLive for this and Jim and I were fed questions throughout the hour long chat. People in the chat submitted a question, the moderator decided which questions to put through, and Jim and I responded (toward the end of the chat a few comments/thoughts were approved, not just questions, but for most of the chat it was just questions). So this seemed to end up being more of a moderated "panel" discussion than what I think of as a "chat." For most of the hour it was just Jim and I responding to questions, which is not exactly what I think of when I think of chat. Some people on Twitter noted the same thing, expressing some frustration that their questions/comments/thoughts were not getting approved.

As it was happening, I felt myself becoming frustrated as well that it wasn't truly a "discussion" as I've come to expect it. As I was thinking about it later, however, I began wondering exactly how I would've structured it that it would've been any better. My natural inclination was to suggest that it should've just been an unmoderated chat, or at least a moderated chat where every on-topic comment was immediately approved. But, with a large audience (apparently over a thousand people at least asked for email reminders of the event), I'm thinking that wouldn't work so well. So I'm guessing that the format they chose was actually not a bad choice, but perhaps I would've chosen not to call it "chat."

Which brings me to the point(s) of this post:

• What exactly makes a chat a chat?
• How many people can be in a chat before it no longer works?
• What's the best format for these Education Week/Teacher Magazine "chats" that have large audiences? And is there a different tool than CoveritLive they could use that might work better?
• Are there ways to meet the needs of diverse participants - some of whom are used to very fast and furious chats and some of whom are not? Or do we simply have to create different events for different online learning styles (keeping in mind that people's styles might change with experience)?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

More Than a Passing Trend Part II

On the heels of my previous post I came across this video by Erik Qualman - some interesting observations in the comments to his post. I'll present it here without comment of my own, other than I think there are some interesting ideas to consider here.



Oh, one more thing. I believe this falls into the category of "D'oh!" Any chance you think they'll do retroactive revenue sharing?

What's in a Name?

Update: The conversation continue here and here.