Schools should educate kids about the world around them even if the kids get there first.
Instead of dismissing social media as distracting or destructive, schools should embrace it as an essential part of the curriculum. Not only does this limit the potential for students to abuse the technology, but it opens a new set of valuable educational tools. Source: 4 Tips for Integrating Social Media Into the Classroom | Mashable.com
Dangers in the virtual world like bullying, pornography, reputation, predators, or viruses, are just as real out in the real world. I think teaching them how to play nice and be smart on all Internet activities should be integral to classroom curricula.
UPDATE:
On a more positive note, I kept my eyes peeled for other information about social media in the classroom and behold more stuff dropped on my desktop from the Twitterverse and beyond. I learned a new word, pedagogy, or method of teaching. I found stuff like a plethora of YouTube videos about Twitter in the classroom, tweets about videos that explain things in plain English, blogs about social media in higher education.
Source: The Twitter Experiment – UT Dallas | YouTube.com
I like what she says at the end, “It’s going to be messy, but messy doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to be bad.” I think that means, students might use bad grammar in Twitter, they might not like going from 1000 word papers to Twitter and back, but the important thing is that they communicate their thoughts. If their thoughts are closely related to the subject being thought, then mission accomplished. In other words, the important thing is the message not the delivery mechanism.
I think the reverse is true too. How you get the message to the students brain can be important. We know that students learn in different ways at different speeds. If a student can watch and remember a YouTube video about a school subject, and then tweet comments about it, then why not try that method; the school might even save money.
I re-found the blog, Social Media in Higher Education, which is one professor’s views about using social media in college classrooms. I won’t go into detailed description of his site, but suffice it to say he is trying to quantify what others are discovering by doing – that is using social media in a classroom has merit. There are caveats and benefits to this new mode of teaching.
Note-to-self: Likes are the new links. We can use facebook’s “Like” buttons on any content.