Overview

There has been a lot of talk about Web 2.0, how it has changed communication, the internet, lifestyles, relationships, and others. But there has not been much discussion about how schools could use social media as an extension to traditional education. While it is true that social networking sites have been useful in the extending the classroom’s reach, social media has not been that evident.

Social Media and Social Networking

To begin with, social media and social networking are two different things. However, in the way these are used, there is an overlap and an interchangeability. Social media sites share media like essays and blogs, music and audio, pictures, drawings and images, as well as infographics. Social networking share connections through common experiences, goals, personal relationships. Web 2.0 is all about interaction. Where Web 1.0 is about putting something on the web for others to see, Web 2.0 is about sharing this item with others, expressing their interests, likes and dislikes, and giving feedback.

In a school setting, it is easy to use social networking if you have a class of students classified as a group and they share ideas, comment posts, and all the other ways to interact online. Even before Facebook, social networking was already being used to communicate in this manner.

Roadblocks to Social Media in a Classroom

Logically, social media should have been used first. However, due to different levels of media aptitude and interests, this has not happened. Given any school classroom, not all the students would be interested in drawings, photography or music. From a teacher’s viewpoint, this could be a way to lead them into using social media by sharing class work materials. The teacher may post an infogram, or a mindmap and the students could interact. However, this is not commonly being done.

With all the types of social media, it is easy to create a school material and have this disseminated via social media, and the students can interact on it, and in some instances revisions may also be done. For those materials where editing tools are available, revision tracking is usually also available. Learning with social media can be done in a sandbox, where the history of the object can be studied for the interaction after the fact.

Interaction through Social Media

In music, there are tools where compositions can be submitted, or songs could be recorded and these could be commented on. The traditional use of audio-visual equipment could be extended far beyond the classroom. For instance, a study of musical influences could be found on existing social media sites. A discussion of Shakespeare’s play could be done using modern English pronunciations, comparing these works with the way words were pronounced during Shakespeare’s time.

There are many ways in how schools could use social media. It all depends on how much leeway the school will allow the teacher to go with it. It also depends on the creativity of the teacher and the class, as well as how receptive the class will be to the idea.

Author Bio

Sarrah McGraw is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Science in Criminology. She currently resides in Dayton, Ohio and she regularly contributes to Learninglaw.com