Activity 7: Learning through social media

Will Richardson wrote in his February 2011 Educational Leadership article ,"Social media afford the opportunity for all children with online access to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, do real work for real audiences for real purposes, find great teachers and collaborators from around the world, and become great teachers in their own right,"

Outside of the classroom and on their own, students are talking, sharing, playing, learning, working with one another, expressing identity, discovering new friends and enemies, cultivating relationships, and pursuing common interests using social media.  It will therefore do educators well to embrace social media as an essential part to the curriculum since doing so will “limit the potential of students abusing the technology and it will also open a new set of valuable educational tools”.  

Some social media schools use include

• Skype: for webcam chats of community of individuals with similar interests and goals

• Mobile phone: for students to “exchange questions and answers with their teachers via SMS and browse classroom blogs for additional instruction. Moreover, as an efficient collaborative tool, students can quickly trade notes or take a snapshot of the blackboard for later studying” Greg Ferenstein Jan 10, 2010.

• Twitter: microblogging allows schools to send up-to-date announcements to students and discussions can also be conducted here.

• Facebook:  create facebook pages and groups for discussions, support, asking and answering questions.  Elementary schools may use edmodo, collaborative classroom, edublogs and kidblog.

• Youtube: for content sharing through video and audio. 

• Wiki: for collobaration

Some of my concerns are

1. Content found on wikis and blogs may not be accurate
2. Some social media may not be suited for all learners.  It is illegal for students under 13 to have a facebook account and mobile phones are banned in schools here in Antigua.
3. Students are able to process information and contribute to class discussions at their own pace, anywhere and place.  Majority of students at my school does not have internet access outside of school.