Monday, August 16, 2010
Over the past five years, social media has impacted the way we share information like nothing we've ever seen on the Internet.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr have made sharing content, pictures, videos and links to other web sites as easy as point and click. Now, these social media applications have changed the way teachers approach education and the way students want to learn.
Competent teachers in the 21st century digital classroom are integrating social networks like Ning, Edmodo and Diigo into daily lesson plans.
Students, even those who may have previously been reluctant to participate in class, are now joining classroom discussions and taking part in digital projects both in school and at home. Some are even chatting up classroom content using their Smart Phones, joining discussions using backchannels like Todays Meet.
All of this remarkably advanced sharing technology has to make you wonder what's next.
Teachers have seen new Internet teaching tools come and go in just a few short years. Knowing this must also make us consider the possibility that social media applications may also be just a cool new fad. Do social networks have a realistic place in the K-12 classroom? Can teachers come up with the resources and know-how to make credible, standards-based lessons, using social media?
Whether the use of tools like Twitter and YouTube in the classroom is fad or frenzy, these amazing information sharing apps must make teachers wonder, just what is the future of social media in education?
