My Boy Ben
I think that many schools miss the point about how social media can be leveraged in education. I recently read:
“Social media is a fast, free and easy way of reaching the parents, teachers, students and staff members in your community…”
Correct, but oh so wrong!
Social media is not a tool simply for communicating with the school community. I think that communicating with the community is a by-product of using social media for education. (And it is really really easy and just needs a process and allocated responsibilities and prioritised usage over other ‘normal’ channels).
If the tool does not add any direct value to how kids learn then everything else is a waste. Simply a duplication of processes that work fine right now and another way to bombard people (parents and kids) with more information.
Kids at shool should be using social media to:
- Invent stuff together (yammer)
- Collaborate on school projects (joint editing of documents)
- Store and share knowledge (wikis, social bookmarking)
- Engage in creative endeavours (games)
- Do more work (better note taking and sharing)
- Learn in better ways (online mind maps)
- Remember things (note taking iPhone apps)
- Plan - their lives and homework
- To set targets and get rewards from peers (similar to organisational mangement systems)
- Share knowledge about things they do outside of school with people from school and learn from it (online photos, trip planners, diaries and videos etc etc)
Plus communicate with parents and friends. But that is already done quite well. I believe teaching can be dramatically improved by applying social media tools in ways that leverage their capabilities to improve learning, not just for more communication!
Many of which you have listed I have been saying (an using) for some time to fellow teachers and banging my head against the wall with the administration.
My mantra has been since I first saw an Apple IIE was “use the technology not a toy but as a learning tool”
It annoys the me deeply when I see schools teaching ICT as a separate subject rather than integrating into all learning experiences.
I would have web conferences with other schools and use “blogger” for the class to write reflections on their work.
I like to view all the technology, laptops,iPhones etc as the new electronic pencil case for students.
Social media should be used to help students work smarter, more collaboratively rather than a one off “gee whizz” project. (I HATE PowerPoint).
I will keep working towards my goal of utilising the social media in the everyday classroom, real or virtual.
Another point to consider is the element of control that schools (like any organisation) may feel they lose when they open up the environment for all to participate in as equals. Perhaps social media might be more willingly embraced by institutions that offer the IB curriculum program.
Hi Liz,
What’s IB?
It would be good even if schools just dipped their toes in the water, like Simon does with blogs. Or maybe a class could set up a delicious account and have students do a collaborative research project. Maybe even a share flickr account for pics of their art in art class. It can even be private (for the class only)
JB
My friend on Facebook says, “Uphill battle there, most teachers see it [social media] as born by satan”
Oh, how S A D
They need to pull their head out of the sand!
Attended an interesting ICT Colloquium last week at DET NSW about the future of technology (incl social media) in the classroom.
Most radical innovation being trialled in some schools right now is that of a virtual classroom environment, akin to Second Life, where student avatars and the avatar of the teacher/ facilitator, interact with each other in learning. The software used has the ability to track eye movements of individual students and use this to assess engagement levels of individual students. Teacher/ facilitator can see at a glance on their PC which students are/ are not active in lessons. Interesting concept.
Hi Douglas!
Glad you found my post!
Can you please send me the link to the tool that tracks students’ eye - Very very interesting - considering what I do with eye tracking!
See you at soon!
JB