Most administrators of K-12 I hate as much as YouTube and Facebook even more that Wikipedia. I've said before, and remains completely true: If our students spent so much time studying how are trying to circumvent content filters of Facebook, we would be cranking out Rhodes scholars, left and right. Not just students, though. More and more teachers are on Facebook, if they are fresh college grads, who grew up with the service or the countless older teachers who, like their peers no-teacher, they all jumped on the Facebook bandwagon.
This is not a new question. Facebook is designed for and by students. Remains only half that colleges and universities are willing to embrace any scale. Facebook, after all, is where child predators, hang and College students (or those headed to college soon) clearly did not need to worry about predators.
Once dislodge my tongue in my cheek, let's take a minute and really think about whether Facebook could actually add any value in education K12 and, for that matter, if you actually added value and higher, where at least is widely accepted. How are people in your schools also asking to use Facebook? I don't expect to convince everyone here, and I know that I'm actually in the minority among educators but I would say that Facebook has value on many levels for K12 educators.
Businesses talk about communication channels a lot: B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer) and, more recently, C2C (Consumer to consumer). If a flower vendor, for example, wants to sell roses florist, could have a Web site, emails with special offers on a variety of roses and shipped directly catalogs, that compose the communication B2B. Amazon ratings and reviews? C2C.
But who are our customers? In education, which are companies? And what means we can use the right communication channels to get them connected? While it depends on the scenario, in most cases, our customers are students and their parents. Businesses are the same schools and teachers.
How long would stay in business if Amazon were to model retail mail order catalog business? B2C communications straight, nothing more, nothing less. The answer is obvious: not very long. Similar questions could be quite easily apply to schools. Because we force our consumers meet us on our terms, through our channels of communication chosen (usually notes home in backpacks and night of the father, to which only parents of our students never appear brighter)? Companies met their potential customers on any channel makes their customers happy, if this is a Facebook page, a web site, email updates, text messages or all of the above. Parents and students actually require fewer schools for which they pay their taxes or tuition dollars?
Where are the students at night? Right on Facebook. Most likely, their parents at least check in once or twice as well. So it would not make sense that alerts report card, homework assignments, or school should be ads on Facebook, too?
Next: ever more surreal conversation between teacher and student»Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment