For many years now, through my education i am asked to look at myself and my actions and ask myself " what can i improve ?" But why don't teacher use video camera's to record there education methodes and let other teachers or student look at the tapes ones a month to improve there methodes ? I mean, if i need to improve during my education, why shouldn't my teacher ?

So why not use social media to improve your education and let them post there video tape on a universal platform where teacher can improve each others teaching methodes ?

Social media is a powerful technology for communicating and building community.  Any powerful technology can be used for good or bad, so I would advise Dell to support critical thinking about social media.  If people understand why we use it, where it comes from, how it works, what its costs & benefits are, and how we evaluate it, they will be in a much stronger position to make good use of it.

I work with an educational nonprofit corporation, KnowledgeContext, that teaches young people to think critically about technology.  KnowledgeContext would work with Dell to promote technological literacy.

Miguel Aznar

• No third party applications should be allowed until they are checked for viruses and other security concerns such as mining personal information.  Updates to these applications should only be allowed after a security check is completed.  
• Default security settings for such sites should be the highest setting which can then be turned down if the user wishes.  
• Adult's profiles should be checked to ensure that sexual offenders are not allowed to interact with children on such sites.  
• Hackers, spammers and phishing scams need to be prosecuted quickly.
• A provision to report abusive activity such as harassment needs to be available and strictly enforced.

A better use of this particular technology would be to allow for two way communication between two boards that are online (maybe this already exists).  For example if a project team was assembled with members from different schools (a potential social media experiment) the members could communicate with each other live in such a way that there was streaming information about what was being written such that the two boards acted as one common board.  This tool combined with instant messenger and/or a microphone could allow for a better long distance method of communicating.  This would be a potential use for this technology that would bridge a gap.  Otherwise I like just plain dry erase boards (essentially no annual costs).

 An alternative to this and a better use of technology for general class note duplication and presentation would be to use something like a Dell Latitude XT2 tablet PC and hook it to a projector.  This would be the most direct way of using an interactive display.  The cost would be about the same (both about $2,000 without projector).  The idea of long distance networking could still be done with this idea by just using NetMeeting (aka Meeting Space) but an intermediate interface would be better for privacy concerns.

 The tablet PC would be very transportable and teachers could use it from home if contacted by a student for help.  A website that acts as an interface for live tablet feeds and a storage area of the help provided would be great.  This would truly decrease knowledge gaps and communication problems.  It’s like an academic Help Desk.  It’s not quite Web 2.0 but it utilizes fast response, customized response, and mass distribution. 

Add instant messaging and/or skype like technology and you would have an advanced form of a webinar with more interaction and less time to setup. Social media like Facebook and Twitter could be used to notify people when key events or current events are occurring, but Facebook/etc would not be directly involved with the academic portion.  American Chemistry Society advertises their webinars/webcasts via social media but keeps their business details separate from the social websites.

A feature that many students would want to add to this type of website would be a facebook like personal page where messages can be sent and information can be shared.  The teachers would want the courses to be set up like fan pages and the school itself could have its own page sharing information about its operations and events. See my post about Facebook to see my opinion about its flaw/inconvenience.

 I intentionally left out anything about cams and granting access to a computer (except NetMeeting) because I find those to be potential problematic areas.  Providing interactive boards online would be a nice addition (even users without touch screens could use that idea but it would be more burdensome)

Another key concept when creating something for online is to watch out for the ‘creepy treehouse effect’ (see definition below) since that is a large deterrent for many people.  It’s like the kid version of ‘big brother’.   I thought this was interesting concept that teachers had noted.

creepy treehouse effect :  

(copied from http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/grading-20-evaluation-digital-age concerning Web 2.0)

n. A place, physical or virtual (e.g. online), built by adults with the intention of luring in kids.

n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewards.