The purpose of this session is to explore the development of guidelines for social computing for school districts to accompany existing acceptable use policies.
 
As school districts explore the use of social computing throughout the school day and as an approach to extend instruction, many educators are making the decision to create a wiki, publish video online, or to participate in blogging, social networking or virtual worlds. While school districts have acceptable use policies for teachers, staff and students, the activities of social computing may require a social media guidelines that provides suggestions as to the proper and improper uses of social media as it relates to district, school, community, parents and students. As students are being taught appropriate digital citizenship, it is also important that teachers be able to model behavior in online and collaborative settings without worrying about repercussions of contributing in a manner unsupported by administration. Many corporations have developed social media guidelines for their employees and it only makes sense that school districts consider similar policies to protect both the district and the employees. Social media guidelines encourage employees to participate in social computing and strive to create an atmosphere of trust and individual accountability. Teachers who must hide their online activity because of nonexistent social media guidelines risk losing their jobs and reputations. A better approach is to collaboratively develop a guideline that is acceptable to administrators, school board members, teachers and parents allowing for involvement in the global conversation in which many are contributing.

Outline

10 minutes
Participants will be asked to discuss the types of social media currently being used by teachers and students and talk about how emerging online collaborative platforms offer educators opportunities to innovate, work together and encourage while gaining a better understanding of the engaging nature of social media.

20 minutes
The discussion will focus on ways in which school districts can establish guidelines that highlight the personal and professional responsibilities of school employees participating in social computing.

30 minutes
Participants will be asked to comment on which portions of an example corporate social media policy could be adapted for school use and what additions and subtractions they would suggest to make it suitable for adoption by school districts.

Supporting Research

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2008-07-27-social-networks_N.htm
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/k-12/2008/09/19/in-search-of-support-teachers-turn-to-blogging.html
http://sncr.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/sncr-social-media-policy-best-practices.pdf
http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/developing-a-social-networking-usage-policy/

Presenter Background

Karen Montgomery is a dynamic, creative educator with a broad knowledge of the potential and actual uses of education technology. Her background includes professional experience as a middle school science and math teacher, program coordinator for the Adventures In Medicine & Science (AIMS) program at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and as an education advocate for AT&T. Throughout her career, Karen has assisted many educators with understanding the issues and trends in education by way of conference presentations, quality community outreach programs, content-based staff instruction, customized professional development workshops and H.323 videoconferencing projects. She possesses a strong understanding of social media and Web 2.0 applications such as blogging, wikis, podcasting, mobile learning, photo sharing, social networking and RSS as it relates to education in today’s classrooms and the Net generation.

Karen is located in St. Peters, Missouri, near St. Louis. She is available to conduct customized educational workshops as well as regional and national conference presentations.

Thinking Machine, Inc. (TMI) is an education technology consulting company formed by Karen Montgomery. TMI provides Web 2.0 and education technology presentations in a wide range of environments and settings. TMI focuses on mentoring educators in the utilization of best practices and conducts professional learning sessions for individuals, small and large groups to enrich teaching and learning using technology tools and applications.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a "catalyst for creative engagement and collaborative learning." Wesley serves as a co-convener for the annual K-12 Online Conference each October and is the co-director of the statewide Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project. His blog, "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" (www.speedofcreativity.org) was selected as the 2006 "Best Learning Theory Blog" by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education, and is utilized regularly by thousands of educators worldwide. Wesley secured $1.3 million in grant funding for West Texas schools participating in the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot Project in 2004-2008. He was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2005. He was an elementary classroom teacher for six years in Texas public schools before serving as a college director of distance learning for five years. He worked for AT&T from 2006 - 2008 as the Director of Education Advocacy. Wesley is completing his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University, studying the impact of podcasting and coursecasting on student learning in higher education. He currently serves as the Director of Technology and Education Outreach for the Oklahoma Heritage Association (a nonprofit) in Oklahoma City.

He has published numerous articles relating to education and technology integration in Technology and Learning, Learning and Leading with Technology, District Administrator, Interactive Educator, The TechEdge, and the journal Internet and Higher Education. He also publishes a weekly podcast. He has presented numerous times at national and international conferences and is a vocal advocate for:

Progressive pedagogy:

* Learning contexts which engage rather than enthrall
* High (rather than minimum) expectations for student learning
* Development of higher order thinking skills (HOTS) for all students
* Comprehensive school reform focused on 21st century skills
* Project-based learning
* Differentiated instruction and learning pathways
* Differentiated and on-going assessment
* Regular collaboration (teacher-to-teacher, student-to-student, and novice learner-to-expert)

Digital learning:

* Student created media
* Digital storytelling
* Safe digital social networking
* Parent education about Internet safety, digital media and learning
* Educator professional development via personal learning networks (PLNs)
* Digital citizenship and digital ethics
* Blended learning which combines digital and face-to-face media and modalities
* Videoconferencing for collaboration and "digital show and tell"
* Collaborative uses of read/write web (web 2.0) technologies
* Citizen journalism with new media tools
* The uses of primary sources to study the diverse voices of our world.