#smcedu – Social Media Education Chat 2

A week ago, skincare on Monday, discount November 9, hospital 2009 the Social Media Education Club organized their first twitter chat on social media education. Last week the questions asked were about measuring success of social media in education, developing the quality of social media curriculum, assessing schools using social media and identifying research or materials about social media courses or educational integration. My summary of last week’s chat is here. You can also read the one written by Andrea Genevieve here.

Today it was the time for a second one. Unlike last week when there were more attendants, it was only me and @yongclee with a brief intervention from @brett (Events Director for Mashable according to his Twitter bio). Unfortunately I would say especially because this week’s chat even had a sponsor: the Richmond Grid Magazine. The questions were really interesting and would definitely benefit from further consideration and attention. Below you can find the questions asked together with a selection of my answers

1. Flexibility, tailoring tools for course makes sense. What tools (eg wikis) would benefit all classes?

2. Do students need to be pushed to use collaborative tools?

  • ana_adi: @yongclee they certainly need to be encouraged to use them as not all of them are aware of them #smcedu
  • ana_adi: @yongclee platforms that students might usually use aren’t always good 4 academic demo as they might pose data security threats #smcedu
  • ana_adi: @yongclee voicethread, google docs and now google wave are good as they can restrict/control access to a group#smcedu
  • ana_adi: @ana_adi on that same token, this is why edu institutions prefer blackboard & moodle apps – security, privacy and control #smcedu
  • ana_adi: @yongclee but purchased or not, uni owner or freely available both teachers and students need to be aware of + & – of these apps #smcedu
  • ana_adi: @yongclee threfore, all these apps require learning, practice and analysis – for some educators w/ busy agendas this is overload #smcedu

3. Do students/teachers NEED academic approval? Value of SM is proven in different jobs every day.

  • ana_adi: @yongclee educators and academic approval –> i guess they do as it’s part of the contribution to and sharing of knowledge #smcedu
  • ana_adi: @yongclee educators and academic approval –> if professors don’t have the approval, students cannot benefit from their teaching #smcedu

4. Academia seems to be late adopters. Is it then a matter of time for SM to be approved by majority.

  • ana_adi: @yongclee academia as SM late adopters –> i think so; it’s not only a matter of teaching but also of publishing research#smcedu

The question about publication returned this week did the question of why social media tools and applications, although available, aren’t used extensively in education. My thought would be, that social media is too new to be widely accepted and therefore it needs its explorers and experimenters as well as it trials and errors. What academic institutions could do is allow for this process to happen by encouraging educational experiments and then replicate the successful ones.

As for publications, for a new method, new publications are needed. Maybe the Social Media Education Club could launch its own electronic journal and select its reviewers from its growing community. This would maintain the peer review process necessary in academia but also create a niche publication dedicated to social media and education.

Finally, today we reached one conclusion (or at least we agreed on this statement):  that schools don’t need to sanction social media per se but rather make students aware of how and why social media is being used in specific jobs.

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