Twitters, Tweets and Facebook – Oh My!

Everyone seems to be talking about social networking. Here at Riverside Publishing, we’ve even noted that many of our parents are signing up for Facebook accounts – a sure sign that social networking has hit the mainstream.

As we think about “next generation” systems, we are exploring the extent to which educators want to incorporate social networking experiences into their usage of such platforms. In an increasingly mobile MySpace’d-Facebooked-Twitter’ed world, do such communications tools have a role to play for K-12 educators?

The example at left is a concept we’ve been playing with. Cleverly (and with a knod to Facebook users everywhere) we’ve called this rough concept  ”My Wall.” Within the context of an educational assessment delivery platform, such as our own Edusoft or DataDirector, would educators want the ability to post messages to each other or status updates within the application itself? Or, would busy educators just view this as “one more place to check” for such messages?

Should we link our assessment delivery platforms to popular tools, like Twitter? Would it be helpful, for example, to “tweet” the beginning of your district’s newest benchmark exam, or to inform classroom teachers that the latest set of academic standards (think: Common Core Standards) are now available within the system?

What’s the appropriate role, if there is one, for such social networking tools? Post your thoughts and ideas. We’d love to engage in some online dialogue with you on this topic…