social networking fail

Steve Hargadon: Ugh. Classic Politics Now Extends to Social Networking in Education.: Hargadon has a good post up about the controlling attitude of educators, the efficiency trap, as he so aptly puts it, of centralization.  The whole post is good and worth a read.

"This seems to indicate that the hundreds to thousands of teacher-initiated social networks that are out there will be made better by 'more efficient and coordinated' efforts. Honestly, I don't think so. I think a great part of their value is because they are not 'efficient and coordinated,' that they are autonomous places for conversation, where educators can pick and choose on their own who they want to talk to and what they want to talk about. The problems identified in this statement aren't really the problems of social networks for educators, they are the problems that fit the narrative of centralized solutions. The great efficiency trap is the same one that locks students and teachers into a education system that touts its efficiency but forgets the cost of those efficiencies: personal control and agency."

The system is only efficient for those administering the system: it isn't a system  that has the user in mind. So the efficiency is less than it seems when you look at it from the user's point of view.  And no one ever looks at it from the kid's point of view because kids do not really count as users.  They're just kids, what do they know?