Incentives

       Recent efforts to gain perspective before pursuing an SMLP policy initiative have been fruitful. In the twenty days since this blog's last post, time has been spent in meetings with a variety of professional educators who have offered valuable insights. Those who shared knowledge of their early investments in social media are encouraging enough to support policy reform. News like this, applied to lessons learned from the proceeding curriculum development, reveals three possible strategies in which all can collaboratively intervene. Each of these is based on one of the points discussed earlier: policy, education, and treatment.

       The process for changing words on official papers to new ones based on the SMLP's core principals is formal. The district school committee is the final check on any policy changes and appearing before them is a must. The decision to be made is, just how bold should the initial requests be? All evidence to this date suggests the most productive thing to do is amend current rules that prohibit student use of personal electronic devices. Other schools have enjoyed success after taking this approach and Medford High School is prepared to do the same. From there, many novel situations will present themselves and require further legislative acts so everyone will be encouraged to learn more. Both are good things leading to education and treatment.

       Education is buoyed by the SMLP's previously conducted curriculum development. The focus on our student-teacher relationship in a classroom setting provides sufficient material for any teacher who wishes to implement Social Media as a curricular enhancement or as a focus in itself. Faculty as well as many in all grade levels have expressed a desire to learn more and incentives exist for both sides of the relationship. Teachers can gain Professional Development Points as part of their contractual obligations. Courses already underway rely on educational tablet instruction and are perfect for helping employees put Social Media in an academic context. As for students, fulfilling graduation requirements becomes the incentive for committing to collaborative development. Mandatory community service hours are a significant resource and will be discussed more in future posts.

       The final intervention attempts to treat the current condition of our new educational tool. As it exists today, Social Media in the hands of a mostly uneducated campus population  is in disrepair. Our information represents a tangible product of the lives we lead and early anecdotal impressions, while showing many positive trends, are frequently alarming. Of course the key word there is "anecdotal" but more thorough research will be conducted soon. Identifying detrimental behavior is no easy task but, as Medford High is increasingly viewed as a learning environment, useful data can be generated.

       Pursuing these incentives over the months ahead will provide many opportunities. Ideally, blog posts will be published with the same regularity as in the internship's first two months and will detail novel situations as they develop. While tempting, adhering to a calendar of scheduled goals is restricting because the school's daily life is always in flux. Instead, the SMLP will do its best to collaborate with a balanced approach to each strategy. For up to date inquiries, do not hesitate to ask.