Steve Kinney

During the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference, Guy Kawasaki (can you tell I’m on a kick lately?) moderated a panel titled “True Stories from Social Media.” During the discussion, Aaron Mentele (partner at one of my favorite web development houses, Electric Pulp), noticed the shift in shift in social media from “Moderate, moderate, moderate” to site owners letting go of the reigns a bit and letting the community take control. The other panelists concurred that a big part of their sites’ success has been in encouraging open and free communication.

I teach in a middle school. Middle school students are not known for their eloquence when it comes to discussing the virtues and pitfalls of their teachers as evident by the writing in the bathroom – I’ve never been the topic of conversation on the bathroom walls, which may either be a good or bad thing.

During the final days of the school year, my co-teacher and I invited students to whip out a piece of paper and tell us what they think of us. We told them not to include their names, but they chose to anyway (or weren’t listening to the instructions – not uncommon). It wasn’t my idea and I was prepared for the worst, but I was blown away by the response. Our students responded with thoughtful and reflective responses, some of which may have been their best prose to date. They were open and honest in their appreciation for the work we had done and respectful in their criticism.

There was a lot that I glossed over in the introduction to this post. The moral of Aaron’s story was that controversy causes spikes in site in traffic – this isn’t the goal for most educators. My moral is slightly different. If we let go of the reigns and stop moderating with an iron fist, we may be surprised with the result. Integrating social media into the classroom is scary and requires a giant leap of faith (or reckless abandon, in my case) but it just might be worth it in the long run.

When students write for social media. They write for audience that isn’t just the teacher. As a result, they need to be more thoughtful in their writing. At the same time, in my experience, they tend to also be more thoughtful in the way they respond to each other’s work.

The result of the student surveys? I’m a caring, dedicated teacher who needs to lighten up on the sarcasm.

By the way, this post was inspired by a post over at Creating Knowledge with Technology as well as Guy Kawasaki, Aaron Mentele, and friends.

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