How Can it Help?

One of Dr. Dennen's blogs this week got me thinking about our social media use and how we often use it for our own personal life. We post pictures, videos, gifs, tweets, etc. and it's all usually about us. We use it as a sort of digital time capsule to make sure that we don't forget what has happened in the past. Old posts come back around to us and we remember the good times that we had when we posted those things. 

I think social media is great. It's one of the most useful things to come with the advancement of our time, but I think that it has the power to do so much more for the world than just being our own personal photo journal or thought log. We've seen the power that social media has had with social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, but also with other movements like climate change, voting rights, and gun violence. And it's astonishing that topics can spread through the sharing of a link or through a hashtag. 

These issues come up often and catch on through social media. There are arguments from both sides about the issues and how they should be handled. But how can social media help? It's a great place for opinions, but it's a better place for facts and information. We've seen throughout the years how facts spread through social media. Wouldn't it be so great to show students and other learners how much they have to gain from that? 

If social media could be used to teach and guide learning, students could and would be exposed to so many topics that they might not have known about. 

Comments

  1. nutsJuly 17, 2022 at 7:25 PM

    Might be most people think social media is a kind of double-edged sword. But, I am leaning toward the opinion that we should be really careful using social media for edu purposes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rachel WellmanJuly 23, 2022 at 1:55 PM

    I hear you. About halfway through the course, I ran into an article that talked about how social media is an underused platform for educators, and it really was kind of bringing up the idea that social media use wouldn't be such a crapshoot in the classroom if we had actual processes and ways to integrate it into the classroom. I also feel like there's a lot of opportunities to use it to help teach critical thinking about writing that we're missing out on because 1). privacy concerns 2). district integration with apps 3). parental approval and 4). teacher and student safety. Really doesn't seem like we're going to see true social media integration in the K-12 classroom in the next couple of decades, but we'll see!

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