Steve Hargadon Points to Ponder

The first point Hargadon makes about how the freedom of failure makes experimentation more innovative is thought provoking. As a classroom teacher in the public schools, I do not feel like I have the freedom to experiment and fail very often. I'm sure students don't either. Given the emphasis placed on test scores and state standards and no child left behind, there does not seem to be much room that allows for experimentation and failure. So when Hargadon makes the assertion that part of the building of a social networking site is the possibility that it will fail in its original intent is interesting. Learning how to change and grow and meet the needs of the people then becomes the true measure of success.

But I suppose there is an aspect of failing in school. Annie O’Connor and I work together all the time, and we are constantly rethinking, discussing, conversing about how we can improve and change our curriculum to better meet the needs of the current students. It’s empowering. Social networking sites, if used for collaboration among teachers, would be great. I would love to network with my friends in Korea and connect to see how to make a site work for us and then possibly extend it into student interaction—like pen pals but through the internet.

I'm also interested in his sixth point about moderating and guiding the network. If I were to use a social network as a classroom teacher, I would be concerned about users being polite to each other and respecting the boundaries set up for the site. I think in a public school setting there would need to be much more teaching of guidelines and boundaries before students would be able to use it. The way they use their own social network sites would be very different from how to use one for a class, and so the rules would have to be slightly different.

I know there are teachers and districts out there that are already on this bandwagon and using it to great benefit, but a serious limitation I have is that many of my students do not have access to a computer. We are also limited by potential legal ramifications with students. Before we could use social networking sites in class, we would need approval form district admin, parents…the list would be long. And then we would be in the scenario of Will Richardson where we are listening to all the ways we CAN’T use a social network in school. Do I sound pessimistic? I don’t mean to. I would love to collaborate with overseas teachers. I think I need to begin with colleagues and then go from there.