Social Media in the Classroom
I was thinking today about the potential impact of social media on the traditional classroom environment. There were several thoughts that came to me about how social media is going to seriously change the education game for students that are utilizing it:
- It can’t be stopped. Students are going to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. whether educators tell them to or not.
- In the past, the sharing of information in the classroom was considered cheating. Now, the Information Age is all about sharing and collaboration. Should the idea of sharing knowledge in the classroom between students change? It seems a little foolish to not utilize every resource you have in the information age.
- Most young students are into mobile communication and social networking much more so than older educators. As devices like the iPhone eventually become the free phones we get with cell phone contracts, it will become increasingly important to integrate this technology into our education.
- Many students may not have the finances or regular access to social media and tools such as the iPhone. Our education system will need to work on making these technologies and capabilities available, and not just too the elite few.
- Students will be sharing information and looking for answers with students well outside the classroom and sphere of influence of educators. Who’s going to stop a student from Twittering with someone across the country to get help on a complex essay or homework assignment?
Do you think that our education system is ready to tackle the implementation of social media in the classroom? What other challenges can you see out there for schools as social media becomes more prevalent?
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The technology is welcome, but not revolutionary, not really. I’ve written a little about this on my own blog http://www.primorisres.wordpress.com. The chalkboard was once spoken of in the same breathless voice we now use for Web 2.0 technologies. We’ve been socializing one way or another for thousands of years. And there are many (ancient) cultures in the world–Canadian First Nations among them–built entirely around socially constructed knowledge.
The big challenge will be for leadership: where there is a will there is a way. The old classroom, if I can use that shorthand, is sustained by systems that extend in all directions way beyond the bricks and mortar of the school; down to the family, up to national notions of education. All of that needs to be brought in line.
Having said that, I think that in the end, after any switch to the new technologies Egan writes about, we’ll see that things will not be all that different. Education is fundamentally teleological. How we reach for the ends may change–indeed it could use a shake up–but we’re still after the same thing as we ever were and always will be.