There is a big part of me that fully understands that social media is the way of the future.  There is a small part of me that participates in it–I have a Facebook page that I mostly use for displaying pictures of my dog–but largely I communicate with people that I know in person or by telephone, and by good old letters and Forever stamps if they’re far away.  I don’t tweet or have a Tumblr page or use Vine or Snapchat, but I understand why children would.  After all, I sat up all night on AOL Instant Messenger in middle school talking to friends that I easily could have called or seen in person.  And all of me understands that you should meet kids where they are.

So, I can get behind Voicethread and Edmodo.  I like the idea of children being able to comment on others’ work and collaborate.  Even if you don’t have a classroom you can have a digital gallery walk.  Students spend a lot of time communicating in short spurts for the whole world to see and ”liking” images and statuses of their peers, so it makes a lot of sense to mimic that activity to engage them.  I also love the idea of giving students time and space to answer.  If you pose a question in an online forum as opposed to live in the classroom, your introverts are more likely to answer.  I am an introvert, and you couldn’t have gotten me to speak up in any class in high school without a crowbar, but I made required online contributions in college without much coercion because like lots of quiet kids, I appreciated the time to compose my thoughts and the freedom from an in-person audience.

But I also understand why teachers and administrators have reason to be cautious about social media in the classroom.  Social media in the real world can breed a mess of ills–with all the news about cyber-bullying, it’s hard to ignore.  Even with sites like Voicethread, students have to be given very clear expectations about their interactions and posts, and teachers must monitor constantly.   The good news is that most sites for education allow moderators to delete posts, but it’s impossible to moderate 24/7.

Ultimately, I think that given appropriate norms and modeling, students will interact positively, but there is always the possibility that students will say something off-topic, inappropriate, or hurtful.