Social media inside a classroom affords the sharing of both informal and formal communication between students as well as acting as a portfolio to track their progress in learning. Dabbagh & Kistsantas (2012) also mentioned that sharing discipline also serves as an opportunity for self-regulated learning and personalized learning for students deciding what is appropriate to share. From a higher perspective in terms of pedagogy, there is a lot going for having social media in a classroom but there are the actual benefits and disadvantages that should be further discussed

Information gathering communities on Twitter for example connects to other classes that do things different than us (tvoparents, 2013). The teacher in the video was able to tweet a class they corresponded with to ask about their safety because they were close to a flooded area in Brisbane, Australia. This connection for example is a great way to expand both the student and the teacher’s perspectives by comparing what others do differently. This also has the added benefit of learning from a global perspective traditionally done with pen pals. The cons to having student on Twitter is information control, the wide web has a lot of things we rather our students not know about and it’s tough to manage that filter without denying the students the access to a global perspective. At the same time there are information we don’t want our students to share too, information in and out of the classroom needs to be regulated.

Blogging is a good social media for students if they are to visit each other’s blogs and contribute to discussions. This from my experience even in university courses can be hard to manage and motivation is always lacking when there are 30 blogs in a class. What blogs do serve best is being a digital portfolio of a student’s learning progress. In tvoparents’ video (2013), students were able to hear how much their reading has improved since the beginning of the year and to be able to feel proud of it. The evidence of learning is important not only for students to see, but an asset for teachers to plan their teaching. Parents are also able to step in and give support as needed. Nothing gets parents more excited at their child’s success and improvement, having evidence of that easily accessible brings the parents into the conversation easily. It is almost unheard of as yet but if students were to keep a blog all through K-12 giving evidence to all their learning, the potential to improve education are vast in theory.

Distraction from learning always remains as a concern, in my observation class some students with the assistance of their parents have Google accounts and can work on Google Drive and its tools. Some students however, are not and there was a divide among the class who were part of an exclusive group chat on Google Hangout. I have seen it being useful when information related to learning was passed on, while idle chatter and whining of being left out serves as a source of distraction detrimental to learning.

Overall, how much control is needed to make social media an effective learning tool without the distraction in classroom community is something to further investigate. As it stands though, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages but the harm usually comes at a more personal level and is harder to observe and investigate.

 

 

Reference

tvoparents. (2013, May 21) Using Social Media in the Classroom [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The Internet and higher education, 15(1), 3-8.