n recent years, there has been explosive growth in students creating, manipulating, and sharing content online (National School Boards Association, 2007). Recognizing the educational value of encouraging such behaviors, many school leaders have shifted their energies from limiting the use of these technologies to limiting their abuse. As with any other behavior, when schools teach and set expectations for appropriate technology use, students rise to meet the expectations. Such conditions allow educators to focus on, in the words of social technology guru Howard Rheingold (n.d.), educating “children about the necessity for critical thinking and [encouraging] them to exercise their own knowledge of how to make moral choices." One process for creating the necessary conditions is reported in From Fear to Facebook, the first-person account of one California principal who endured a series of false starts to finally arrive at a place where students in his school were maximizing their use of laptops and participatory technologies without the constant distractions of misuse (Levinson, 2010). Other similar processes and programs are emerging, and they all share a common theme: an education that fails to account for the use of social media tools prepares students well for the past, but not for their future.
Kathy Grubb on 10 Sep 12Great article on schools using teachers to help teach others in the school about different areas in technology that they are competent in. My only thought was that it really should have gone further and reported on schools using its students to train the teachers and fellow classmates. We have a school nearby that has a class on basic computer repair and then the students then spend one hour a week going around the school helping out the teachers. Really cuts down on expenses and students have a sense of pride and a useful and marketable skill!
