Social Media and Education

here is little doubt that the use of social media tools such as wikis, blogs, and Facebook to name a few, are transforming the way we communicate and collaborate from business to education. I want to use this week’s blog to focus on the use of social media tools in education. The video featuring Will Richardson was very instructive,Understanding instructional technologies. Mr. Richardson, an educator, who calls himself an “evangelist” for the use of internet related technologies in the classroom, and who talks about the“ Read/ Write Web,” says in his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcast and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, (2009), that “while 90% of our connected students who have access to the internet use social Web technologies in their personal lives, only a small fraction of teachers and educators, have begun to understand fully how a networked learning environment could assist them in teaching students”.

Social media tools create a meeting place, either in or out of a traditional classroom setting, where teachers and students can connect, read/ write, create content, and publish in a continuous cycle. This constant communication and collaboration allows the student and the teacher to switch roles where the focus is on “everyone learning and everyone teaching.” Additionally, Richardson says, teachers and educators have to also learn together about on-line communities and then connect their students with these communities, inspiring them to learn while emphasizing the teachers’ way is not the only way. These on-line communities may provide alternative solutions and ideas that are both creative and useful. Familiarity of social media tools should be part of a teacher’s professional development. This point was further illustrated by comments made in a 2009 report by the The Knowledgeworks Foundation titled: The Knowledgeworks Foundation Presents: 2020 Forecast, Creating The Future of Learning. the authors of this report stated:

“ If you think that the future will require better schools you’re wrong! The future of education will call for entirely different learning environments.”

“If you think that we will need better teachers you’re wrong! Tomorrow’s learners will need guides who take on different roles.”

This phenomenon of social media in education is taking place at the college and post–graduate level as well. In a recent New York Times article entitled “Universities Use Social Media to Connect,” (A. Pfeiffer, New York Times, March 30, 2010), Alice Pfeiffer writes that ArXiv.org which emerged as far back as 1991 at Cornell University allows free world-wide access and response to 600,000 on-line research papers in physics, math, computer science and was one of the earliest applications of academic social networking. This open-source platform created by researchers as an information and communications vehicle had other benefits, including allowing scientist to conduct peer-to peer research validation prior to submitting for publication.

Other examples include New York University, one of many academic institutions using Blackboard, a website that facilitates the sharing of materials and ideas and Fielding’s use of FELIX. These tools are helping students learn in ways that were not possible in the past. What is clear is that social media’s impact on education will become even more pervasive as time goes on and digital literacy among teachers and educators will no be an longer an option. Their future in education will require it.