For Education As For Business

Through following various friends on Twitter steeped in the contributions online social media is playing in deploying product interest; I am noticing bits and pieces of best practices educators may implement when utilizing social technology within their instruction.

A recent post from The Conversation Agent's blog called The Hardest Thing to Manage: Our Own Ego discusses how managing our ego plays a critical role within the pursuits of presenting ourselves online. The section I found of most interest regarded a gist from Guy Kawasaki's book: The Art of the Start. The Conversation Agent's summary of Kawasaki's 7 milestones that apply to business and any the educational connections I perceived are as follows:

1. Prove your concept - Define your goals for allowing students to participate in a web-based social activity. Is simple formative assessment the priority? Do your interests surround building a collaborative community? Is student participation meant to be isolated (classroom-based) or open (cross-classed)?
2. Complete design specs - Which social media tool provides you with features that meet your goals? If your goals are collaborative in nature, perhaps using Google Docs is best. If academic honesty is of high concern, the traceable features of a Wikispace may be a reliable option. If a more global experience is necessary, ePals or TakingItGlobal might suit your needs. Collaboration with peers highly web 2.0 literate or a district instructional technology coach is highly recommended at this R&D stage.
3. Finish a prototype and show it around - I tell my teachers, "Try to break it." What ever tool you decide to use; you need to master its features before requiring the students to do so. Since the participatory nature of these forms of online media is difficult to test alone; try to bring in the assistance of your colleagues. This collegial assistance can certainly offer both extrinsic and intrinsic benefits beyond learning a new technological tool. Depending on your school social climate, attempt to utilize administrators and the school board membership in testing your educational "prototype".
4. Raise capital - Pretty obvious application here...Utilize the synergy you have built in the demo stage to motivate interest. Of course free is best...
5. Ship/show a testable version to customers - Start with a class of students you can provide your with honest feedback. The respect you have gained with your students and their levels of maturity can go a long way. Time to cash in... It's also time to consider if you as the classroom leader are providing the students with intrinsically motivational reasons to participate in your choice of online social tasks.Ship/show the final version to customers - After you have defined your goals, found the right "tool for the job", mastered it use, evaluated and discovered how to generate student interest; it's ready to deploy on a larger scale.
6. Achieve break-even - On the first attempt and at an absolute minimum, expect the students to learn as much from their utilization of your chosen form of social media as they would have without it. Quickly raise the bar from here. Scaffolding your approach with students inexperienced with applying social media to an academic and problem-solving scenario should yield better results than throwing them into the deep end and hoping your instructional goals don't drown with them.

As business procedures change, so must the business of daily classroom activities. Maintaining collegial relationships via online social media (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) with any professionals outside of the teaching and learning community has never been easier and as beneficial to lift the shroud of how education should align with authentic "real world" operations.