Social Media, Technology, Software and American Public Schools

WWW-Talk,
 
A contemporary topic includes social media and public schools, as part of curriculum models, studying-related or homework-related activities, or in the context of recreational Web use during school.
 
Some web articles support social networking websites for students in public schools: http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2010/06/16/03networking.h03.html , http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/05/20/teaching-in-a-socially-networked-classroom/ .  There is also at least one survey of K-12 educators about social networking and content-sharing tools: http://www.edweb.net/fimages/op/K12Survey.pdf.

Marketing can explain a prevalence of articles encouraging the use of Web-based social media applications in schools, compared to other opinions.  Some article authors are also authors of books about social media and public schools.  Companies so marketing could be doing so because they want to advertise to young Americans, to advertise to them specific brands of clothes, specific music albums or entertainment.
 
Some social media websites have made use of Sponsored Stories, the topic of a class action lawsuit, Fraley v. Facebook (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraley_v._Facebook,_Inc).  "As Facebook builds its ads business and gives advertisers more ways to reach different audiences, a new lexicon has emerged. The social network has invented terms like Sponsored Stories, Page Post Ads and Promoted Posts, but it doesn’t always explain them or maintain consistent usage over time, especially since the same ads serve different levels of advertisers, who purchase them through varying channels" (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2013/01/11/understanding-the-difference-between-facebook-sponsored-stories-page-post-ads-promoted-posts-and-marketplace-ads/).
 
A solution for public schools to get all of the features of technology-enhanced socialization software without any of their concerns includes that public schools can purchase and make use of application servers for intranets and the Internet.  Educators could then configure and make available software applications for their students on those public school servers interoperably with digital textbook tablet computers.

Each school district could install and configure specific software applications onto their servers for classroom use by educators.  Students could access such applications from inside schoolbuildings utilizing intranets and from outside of schoolbuildings utilizing wide area networks or the Internet.  Each school can host their own Web applications, for example as per: http://www.schooname.schooldistrict.state.edu or http://www.schoolname.schooldistrict.state.us .

Rationale for school districts purchasing servers, equipment, and computer software includes encouraging capitalist processes, competitions to manufacture, sell and steward versioning products tailored to educational settings to enhance educational results and outcomes.
 
The combination of adequate school district equipment funds and teacher involvement in the purchase of or activation of computer software from options available to them, utilizing their classroom observations and tacit knowledge of what is working, can result in tasked development, rapid versioning, and the utilization of emerging data and metrics, reports, and other topics from education science and other multidisciplinary research.  Such processes can expedite advancements in educational technology and software, including software simultaneously providing technology-enhanced socialization and scholastic features.


 
Kind regards,

Adam Sobieski