If Not Us, Who? Social Media Policy and the iSchool Classroom

摘要

Social networking tools offer opportunities for innovative, participative pedagogical practice within traditional institutional frameworks. However, tensions continue to develop within this space: between creativity and security, personal and professional identity, privacy and openness. We argue that iSchools are uniquely positioned to create proactive, adaptive policies guiding the pedagogical use of social media and offer initial recommendations toward the crafting of such policies. If we expect information school graduates to be proficient and critical users of perpetually evolving social media technologies, we need to create learning environments that support the ethical, reflective and effective use of these tools. As an initial step in that direction, we report on three explorations we conducted to identify the challenges and opportunities that are part of today's educational social media landscape. Informed by these investigations we put forward initial guidelines for developing a "Social Media & the iSchool Classroom" policy for other schools to appropriate, modify and enhance.