Social Media and Our Classrooms

Lately I have been following Howard Rheingold's work with social media. It is innovators like Rheingold and Danah Boyd who have been at the forefront of the discussion on social media in education.

Social Media is "the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings".

One of our main goals as educators is to promote the development of critical thinking skills. Social Media is a perfect example of this. Using the technology that our students are familiar with, video, twitter, blogs, forums, wikis and chat, we can support our curricular goals with new methods.

Rheingold has created a platform, that will go public soon, that brings all these social media tools together and promote a higher level of understanding. The web platform takes these social media in order to support the skills we attempt to impart to our students.

He states in a video, "student-led collaborative inquiry and involvement... enlists their enthusiasm in ways that even very good lectures and texts don't." He covers what he calls meta-skills, which include: critical inquiry, pathfinding, balancing individual and collective voice, and attention-to-attention.

Social Media like Seesmic, which allows video posts and responses, can provide a platform for support of the skills that Rheingold mentions in his aforementioned video.

These meta-skills are a core part of what we teach, it just makes sense to use technology that will bolster our teaching efforts and keep our students engaged.