Naturally, I wondered at the efficacy of using social media in the school or classroom and what protection we can offer students. A company like Gaggle claims to be able to monitor student activity online and even in the cloud and warn a school or district of dangerous or inappropriate activity. I’m not sure if I would be more worried about student privacy concerns from the kids having more open access to the internet or from this company monitoring and storing student online activity. Something to be entered into carefully, for sure. I think that every School District needs to have very clear expectations and policies that protect our students, but not choke them on rules. Schools need to be able to develop internal policies that work for their community and allow safe, yet more open, online access. Not an easy problem to tackle. Have a look at Vancouver’s Susan Cumberland’s “Pros and Cons of Social Media in the Classroom”. It may not be rocket science, but it does take some serious thought before embracing something so hard to control.