What Does Social Media Mean For Our Schools?
In our last post, we tackled the question, “What is social media?“
In that article, I shared a video with you that discussed “in plain English” what social media is and how it fundamentally works.
While the video does a good job of explaining the basic principles behind social media, it probably left you wondering, “What does all of this have to do with the education system and our schools?”
Well, I imagine it has more to do with our education system that we currently realize, but here are some of my thoughts and ideas pulled from the forementioned video.
The Linear Education Model Is Shot
It used to be that information was passed down a chain of command. The school administration would tell the teachers what to teach… and the teachers would then tell the students what they had to learn.
But now it’s not that simple!
Social media has opened up new possibilities and new ideas for the way we learn and educate. Just like the citizens of Scoopville embraced the multitude of new flavors that were made avalable to them after ice cream makers were introduced to the town, school administrators, teachers, and students are now embracing social media and the Internet as a new way of learning.
The linear model of education is being altered because information no longer flows in a straight line from top to bottom. Instead, information is being sent from the bottom to the top, from the middle to the bottom, and from all sides.
In the future, schools won’t be just be responsible for teaching their students, but their students will (in many ways) be responsible for educating and communicated with their schools. The information exchange is becoming more cylyndrical and less heirarchal.
School May Not Be The Best Place For Learning
Just as the residents of Scoopville discovered that there were better, more inspiring flavors of ice cream than chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, students and staff alike are now realizing that the classroom may not be the best place for learning.
With so much information readily available, people are quickly realizing that they can get the infromation they want and have it delivered easily, automatically, and freely in a way the traditional classroom can not.
If you notice your students dozing off in the middle of one of your classes, it’s likely because he believes the information you are giving him is not relevant to his unique situation… and the information he’s getting on their cell phone, home computer, or social media site is!
Too Much Unrelated / Potentially Dangerous Information
One of the biggest fears many parents, teachers and school administrators have in regards to introducing the Internet and social media to its students is that the Internet is filled with all sorts of information that children shouldn’t have access to (or at least, we don’t want them to have access to).
It’s a legitimate concern, but social media is changing the way we filter the information we want… and the information we don’t.
With social media, we can now subscribe to trusted sources, in much the same way you subscribe to your local newspaper or magazine. You know, as a subscriber to those publications, that you won’t be surprised to open the page one day and find a cuss word or a Playboy centerfold spread out on the pages. And you know this because the newspapers and magazines you subscribe to don’t produce that sort of content.
The same is true for the Internet and social media. Websites, blogs, and social media sites now allow you to subscribe to feeds that automatically deliver the content you want in the manner you are comfortable with – whether that be email, social media, or through your favorite RSS aggrigator.
So when you find a trusted source of information or a friend you think is worth communicating with, you simply subscribe to their feed or become their friend, and have their information delivered to you, while at the same time, filtering out the information you don’t want.
It’s the new means of online news gathering… and it’s chnaging the way the world communicates, subscribes to, and spreads information. And it’s just part of the reason our world’s newspapers are dying. Social media and the Web 2.0 movement has changed the way people get their information. Now it’s only a matter of time before this change crosses over into our classrooms.
New Opportunities To Create & Communicate With People That Care
Finally, social media and the connectivity of the Internet gives us the opportunity to communcate and learn from people from around the world.
No longer limited to a single classroom, students studying the holocaust can chat live via streaming video with students living in Berlin. On the same note, teachers looking for ideas on how to motivate absentminded students can now exchange ideas in a Facebook Group with other teachers from around the world. And believe it or not, teachers now have the tools available to help them keep parents in the loop in regards to their child’s education.
As you can see, this whole “social media thing” has some incredibly powerful posibilities. But we’ve got a lot of work to do before social media and the Internet in the classrooms becomes a norm. There are obstacles to overcome and hurdles to jump.
In the coming weeks I plan to start showing how some schools are using (or have attempted to use) the Internet and social media as a means of educating both their students, teachers, parents and staff. So stay tuned… because it’s about to get interesting.
