The idea of using social media as a learning tool is great in theory. Social Learning Theory says that we learn better with and from others. According to Vygotsky, knowledge is socially constructed, therefore, social media should be a gold mine in creating knowledgeable students. Social Media has gotten a bad rep in the education world due to the lack of knowledge surrounding it in early years, as well as the lack of regulations for kids and students. Cyberbullying became a massive issue as students were able to hide behind usernames and screens. There was also no reprieve from the bullying, as social media was a constant between home and school. Because of these consequences,when social media was first introduced, educators and school admin were adamant that it was negatively affecting not only the learners, but the learning environment. In my personal experience, the wifi at my highschool had all social media apps blocked from the server. This was the school’s attempt at stopping students from using social media, but as you could have guessed, it did not work. Students used VPN’s to get around the blocked servers and social media use was still going on outside of school hours. Based on what we know about social learning theory, hopefully there is a way in which educators can use social media to their advantage.
The BC curriculum has 7 Core Competencies that teachers are required to teach their students. Of the seven, 3 fall under the Personal and Social branch. These include, personal awareness and responsibility, positive personal and cultural identity, and social awareness and responsibility. Before using social media to teach these 3 competencies, we need to dial it back a bit and teach students what it means to have personal and social awareness. We need to teach students how to use social media responsibly in a way that engages their personal and social awareness. One way that I would suggest doing this is having your students create a twitter or instagram account specifically for this class. For the duration of the semester, students are only allowed to have the class follow them, making the accounts a class community. There could be mini-assignments throughout the term like asking students to create a post sharing their opinion on the short story we read in class, or creating an online activist poster for an issue that resonates with them. This way you can teach students the benefits of using social media as a learning platform while also being able to monitor it. By the end of the term students will also have the beginnings of their own personal learning network! I am excited to try this out in my classroom one day!
Overall, social media definitely has its pros and cons when it comes to using it in schools and for educational contexts’, however, if we are able to teach our students how to engage with social media in a responsible way, the pros can outweigh the cons. Students need to be taught about their personal and social awareness as well as how to engage critically with what they are being shown online. If students can grasp this, then the possibilities are endless for learning through social media!
Sources:
Chapter 9 Designing for Open and Social Learning
by Alec Couros and Katia Hildebrandt
https://vut.oer4pacific.org/id/eprint/12/1/Emergence_and_Innovation_in_Digital_Learning.pdf#page=159
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