Looking for a Safe Social Learning System? Trust “MOM”
Today, online collaboration and social networking play an important role in K-12 education, both inside and outside the classroom. So how can you be sure your social learning environment is safe? Here’s what you need to know as you research and evaluate social learning systems.
- Membership: You don’t allow strangers to wander the halls of your school, so why would you allow them to log into your social learning environment? Well, you wouldn’t. Private membership limits access to those who belong there.
- Open Chat: Do you want to keep chatting within your communities on the up-and-up? Then you’ll want to find a system with Open Chat, making making the feature a no-privacy zone. It keeps conversations on topic and productive. And it ensures that everyone feels welcome to join in.
- Monitoring: The most effective monitoring in a social learning system is twofold. One type — profanity and language filtering — prevents your community from being exposed to inappropriate content. The other — user activity logs and user, group and role-based permission controls — allow you to get a 360° of how the system is being used so you can change permissions and monitor potential issues.
Keeping students safe doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice the advantages a social learning system provides. Just remember this simple acronym — “MOM” — and you’ll be well on your way to finding a system you can really trust.
