Here’s an interesting post from edustir commenting on this article from CNET.  I particularly appreciated this line:

Some companies think there an opportunity to sell schools educationally “relevant” social tools at a premium. These sorts of redundant tools frustrate me. It’s one thing to protect and encase localized information within an ecosystem that keeps it there. But it’s another thing to adopt costly half-measures that are endemic only to that system and leave the end users no smarter than they began.

First, “closed” systems result in missed opportunities for learning.  Systems that only allow students to interact with other students and teachers at their school add little value to the learning ecosystem.  (Why invest time and money in creating a forum for communication among people who already meet face-to-face every day?)  The real opportunities in social media lie in connecting students with peers, experts, mentors, and authentic audiences in the world beyond the school.

Second, many of the packaged systems being marketed to schools come with a fatal flaw: students can’t keep their content or stay in touch with their network connections when they graduate or move. 

A more ideal system would allow schools/teachers to moderate and monitor student communication online and gradually allow more freedom and transfer more responsibility to students as they mature and become more web savvy, ultimately giving students full control.  Throughout this gradual hand-off, however, students should be able to invest time and creative energy in building their portfolios and learning networks and in mixing their own ideas with content created or curated by their teachers and others knowing they are building a personalized resource they can keep and use forever. 

Before investing scarce dollars in “custom solutions” that seem safe and easy, schools should make sure that the content students create can be transferred or exported when the student is ready to move from the “school wide web” to the world wide one.  (Further, before buying into a proprietary vendor-owned or managed solution, districts should verify that the content teachers and students create can’t be “held hostage” down the road if a better, less expensive solution becomes available from someone else.)

For edustir’s full post, follow the link in the headline.

Schools banning social networking sites is counterproductive. The reason you still hear so many stories about people getting in trouble about something they’ve done online, is no one has been educated. The teachers don’t often know how to use social web tools, many parents are afraid of…