The Getting Smart blog has a great post entitled “Mentoring Your Students in Social Media or Vice Versa”. He’s talking about the fact that while students live in social media, teachers can’t just use public social media products in an educational environment. Hey! That what I say too!

“Most of us educators are wrapped up in social media, as well, but we’ve managed to keep education itself in a sterile environment, safe from the outside world. By the way, the outside world prefers to be called by its actual name: The Real World.

Naturally, many educators want to include their students in social media too, but they are not sure how to safely orchestrate an educational integration with networks like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and so on.

So let’s get serious about making a social-networking strategy for our classroom. This needs to be a well thought-out strategy. Don’t just start friending students on Facebook and firing off tweets with tomorrow’s homework assignment on it. Let’s work on the plan first.”

See the full article here: http://gettingsmart.com