Graded 21st Century

First, who will be regulated by the policy—i.e., will certain job titles or departments be excluded altogether or subject to less restrictions?

Second, what will be regulated—will all online activity be subject to the policy or only when the employee somehow associates himself with your organization (for example, by using his company e-mail account in his Twitter profile).

Third, why are you writing a policy in the first place? Is it to encourage employees to get out there and embrace social media, hopefully with some resulting benefits returning to the employer? Or are you trying to regulate online use of social-networking sites because productivity has become an issue? There are infinite variations of those two choices and your organization needs to settle on one before you start hashing out actual policy provisions.

To take full advantage of that reality, the vast majority of classes will be inquiry-based, and they will be grounded in the social online tools like blogs and social bookmarks and others that more relevantly reflect their learning realities. And Lisa’s teachers will know what it’s like to learn for themselves in these global networks as well. It’s a journey of change coming to fruition.

“We have to do both.” We have to make sure our students “succeed” by the traditional measures, but we also have to make sure they have the skills and literacies to navigate the social, online learning spaces they are going to be inhabiting well into their adulthood. What choice do we have?

Are you in the process of enacting the changes that your students need that no one is asking for?

Engaging content gives your reader a peek at something he or she hasn’t seen before, but can relate to in some way.

Engaging content starts and ends with telling a good story. Good stories require compelling characters, insider details and tales of challenges overcome.

Engaging content is anything that provides value to the lives of your prospects, customers or community members

We are gaining the ability to consciously participate in our evolution as a species. We are networking ourselves together into something perhaps greater than the sum of our many parts. But we must not relinquish our participation in this project, entrusting our future to the few who learn to program or the companies paying them to do so.

At the very least we must come to recognize the biases - the tendencies- of the technologies we are using, and encourage our young people to do the same. If we don't participate in building our digital future together, it will be done by someone - or something - else.

If they don't know what the programs they are using are even for, they don't stand a chance to use them effectively. They are less likely to become power users than the used.