I’m going to play Devil’s advocate for a bit here, because while I believe social media offer enormous opportunities for students to learn how to respectfully communicate with teachers, parents, one another, experts in various fields, and the public at large, I also strongly believe that kids and grownups alike need spaces (and simply because of societal shifts, these spaces are increasingly online) where they’re not working, not thinking too hard, and not feeling like they’re being analysed and evaluated. Dean Shareski (@shareski) a Community Manager for Discovery Education Canada, said the same thing in his talk at the TDSB Google Camp I attended a couple of weeks ago, that initially, he used Twitter because it was fun, and when we use social media with kids, it should be for fun as well.
I have very big concerns about using social media in the classroom, mostly because, while I’d say I have about 100 times more self-discipline than my average student (aged 8 to 12), I cannot possibly hope to open Facebook and stay on task. It’s like asking a kid to go to a candy store for some miso soup. Even if you love miso soup, when you see it beside a lot of candy, it won’t seem that appealing. The same can be said for trying to integrate work into social media. If one of you were my Facebook friend and posted a great article about Learning with social media, and it comes up right between Rihanna and Drake’s new video (shot on my street, btw…) and John Oliver making fun of Trump, it won’t have the same drawing power as it does in another context. Niether Bates (2014) nor November (2012) acknowledge the possibility of social media being distracting.
For social media to work in a classroom setting, it must be established and maintained for the classroom setting alone. That means, if a student posts “why did you slide tackle me at recess?” to another student on the class Twitter page, the teacher needs to have a word with the student to maintain professional parameters. So rather than redesign a course around social media, I think the social media needs to redesigned around the particular group of students and the subject matter it’s being used for. And most importantly, educational and non-educational social media need to stay separate, even if some of the fun Shareski advocates can be injected into the educational social media.