Social Media in the Classroom

Not only do schools face this question, but teachers as well; do we allow the use of social media in our schools? I am a technology teacher, so you  would think that I would be the first person to say ‘absolutely we should allow it’, and yet I find myself very torn. The majority of our students not only use social media as a main form of communication, but it is also their news source, their photo albums, and ever more so an increasing part of their social identity. I think the concept that many schools and teachers are grappling with is the last component I mentioned; that more and more often social media is becoming increasingly intertwined with a students both social identity and self identity. While this in and of itself is not bad, what is becoming a problem is the abuse of the power of social media.  Schools are constantly trying to combat cyber bullying, which can be very difficult to control and potentially even more difficult if social media is allowed at school.

I believe that certain forms of social media really can enhance education. In my classroom we often use Youtube to upload videos the students create or find videos about SketchUp or other engineering questions. While yes there is content that is not appropriate for school on Youtube, monitoring students while they are using Youtube can really combat this problem. All of my students create blogs for their design portfolios, which is another fabulous tool for education.

I think where we are finding more of the issues are social networking media and micoblogging sites like Twitter and Vine. While these sites can be beneficial and many people use them, they are much harder to regulate in the classroom. If say a student tweets something negative about another student and it starts trending around the school it will happen much faster then might happen on a blog site. The sticky situation here is we also have social media sites like Edmodo which is an excellent teaching tool, but technically it is still a form of social networking.

Honestly, I think that teachers should be able to use their discretion as to what social media is allowed in their classroom. If the teacher has a good handle on the social media being used and feels comfortable and competent to regulate it then it can be wonderful teaching tool and a fabulous form of student engagement. The world and technology are rapidly changing and education needs to figure out a way to keep up.