Probably one of the reason the discussion about social media as a learning tool is important is because of the popularity of social media. The popularity score is more in terms of active participation of the number of people of all age groups.
It would be wonderful to have this platform used as a media for learning.
Can Social Media act as a platform to assist learning?
So structurally everything is in place to enable learning if no distinction is made between formal and informal learning!
With some constraints on the social media - allowing a teacher have some special privilege to moderate; like allowing or restricting "what to do when"? The social media as a platform and an ICT learning tool can be stitched together.
However, any constraint (hierarchy) reduce the "social media as a learning tool" to a mere classroom (CR) kind of environment. At best one could call this social media learning tool as CR++.
Now the question is should CR++ be in addition to a class room or in its own right an independent platform for learning? Independent of the answer, CR++ could have the following advantages:
If you dilute the definition of social media a bit and look at it as a platform to make things immersive, faster information delivery then one can look at Khan Academy type of learning. However for this to work .. some kind of formalism needs to be planned by educators especially in terms of content generation which address
Some platforms that can be gainfully used for learning.
Endnote: SM is more immersive (something like a Radio versus TV). Probably too early to infer how social media can be used as a learning tool. Like the "missed call" came out of necessity (hole on the wall experiment).. may be something will come out out of sheer necessity.
May be travelling becomes too expensive (with the traffic jams!) or time consuming meaning CR++ is the only option!
It would be wonderful to have this platform used as a media for learning.
Can Social Media act as a platform to assist learning?
- Platform for Communication
- Allows for active participation (in sense of user generated data; noisy data)
- Generally all are equal (peer communication) but
- some emerge as leaders (may be based on their expertise, participation, creativity ....)
- SIG formed (Leaders moderate the group)
- leads to some focused discussion (signs of learning - though not formal)
- since there is less noise "useful learning can happen"
So structurally everything is in place to enable learning if no distinction is made between formal and informal learning!
With some constraints on the social media - allowing a teacher have some special privilege to moderate; like allowing or restricting "what to do when"? The social media as a platform and an ICT learning tool can be stitched together.
However, any constraint (hierarchy) reduce the "social media as a learning tool" to a mere classroom (CR) kind of environment. At best one could call this social media learning tool as CR++.
Now the question is should CR++ be in addition to a class room or in its own right an independent platform for learning? Independent of the answer, CR++ could have the following advantages:
- Multiple teacher driven courses (different versions of the same topic)
- Multimedia driven courses means may be faster learning and stronger understanding
- students learn anytime anywhere
- if you missed CR, use CR++ or if you did not understand CR use CR++ to refresh general problems
- Requires infrastructure (communication channel, devices) for all participants
- assumption that electricity and bandwidth is reliable)
If you dilute the definition of social media a bit and look at it as a platform to make things immersive, faster information delivery then one can look at Khan Academy type of learning. However for this to work .. some kind of formalism needs to be planned by educators especially in terms of content generation which address
- Culturally - (date-month vs month-date)
- Geographically (left hand drive vs right hand drive)
- Language (several non-English!)
- rural learners vs urban learners
- Higher, Middle, Primary, Play school
- learners with disablity
Some platforms that can be gainfully used for learning.
- FB/Orkut
- Voice Twitter
- YouTube Channel/Podcast/live cast
- LinkerdIn
- "X" Groups (Google, Yahoo)
- Blogs (WordPress, Blogger)
- Wiki
- Skype
Endnote: SM is more immersive (something like a Radio versus TV). Probably too early to infer how social media can be used as a learning tool. Like the "missed call" came out of necessity (hole on the wall experiment).. may be something will come out out of sheer necessity.
May be travelling becomes too expensive (with the traffic jams!) or time consuming meaning CR++ is the only option!
Comments