Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

8.30.10 | The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) has collected “best practices” for using social media in college and university classrooms. Authored by instructors and professors across the nation, the site includes ideas for everything from blogs to Twitter to Facebook to Skype. Don’t miss the handouts.

The list feels endless, but thankfully, you can “search by idea” using the category cloud. If you want to submit your best practices for using social media, look for the email address in the site’s sidebar.

Richard Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers asked readers to “to share the new things they’re trying in their classrooms this fall.” Within 72 hours he had received 140 responses, which he turned into a Google presentation.

Many of the ideas are just quick thoughts (starting a class Twitter feed, integrating “World of Warcraft,” collaborating with Google Docs), but as a whole they capture the variety of approaches and enthusiasm that can only come from working with digital tools. And unlike other lists that tend to focus on higher education, many of the contributors are from middle schools and high schools.

“As for myself,” writes Byrne, “this year I plan to try using mobile apps more effectively in my classroom. In particular, I’m excited to use Google’s Android App developer.”

We’re looking forward to seeing what develops. Learn more about Google App Inventor at Spotlight.

Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice believes educators would be more inspired to use social media in the classroom if they fully understood how digital tools are an integral part of their students’ lives. To that end, D’Costa recommends viewing “Decade 2,” a documentary by George Haines that presents the voices and stories of the Gen-Y generation (more background available here).

While the film is a complex portrait of the power and pitfalls of a generational immersion in social media, D’Costa notes that two points emerge clearly for the viewer:

First, that these subjects are operating in a world that didn’t exist five years ago. Some hold job titles like Social Media Strategist, and others are entrepreneurs who can shape their job as they want and need using social tools. These are individuals who have learned early the power of technology and shared communication, and they’ve harnessed it. Second, they’re aware that they have needed to find their way in the dark. Several individuals in the documentary discuss how poorly prepared they feel their education has left them. This is an interesting statement when one considers reports that this not a tech savvy generation. And it prompts one to question whether the educational system can support the changing face of connectedness and business overall.

D’Costa continues with more of her own observations:

For me, it also raised some thought about the digital divide, and how far behind some students may fall without any introduction to social technologies. One of the film’s participants says, “Digital literacy is the new English,” which to me is an incredibly telling statement about how these young adults view the world.

John Palfrey from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School was searching for very practical classroom management advice. He shares the results of an exercise he assigned at a research symposium “in which groups of teachers (mostly at the university level; a few teaching younger students) had to work together to come up with policies on laptops in the classroom.” 

Some groups argued for complete freedom for the students; some wanted to leave it up to the teacher’s discretion. But the questions that emerged might have been more interesting than the answers. Most groups emphasized the need to educate students on using technology responsibly rather than denying them the opportunity to use it all together.

Steve Kolowich at Insider Higher Ed provides a broader perspective by bringing it back to the students, wondering what critical tools—not just computer skills—students need to thrive in a digital age.

He interviews Susan Zvacek, director of instructional development at the University of Kansas, about the need for new definitions of technological literacy:

The assumption that today’s student are computer-literate because they are “digital natives” is a pernicious one, Zvacek said. “Our students are task-specific tech savvy: they know how to do many things,” she said. “What we need is for them to be tech-skeptical.”

Zvacek was careful to make clear that by tech-skeptical, she did not mean tech-negative. The skepticism she advocates is not a knee-jerk aversion to new technology tools, but rather the critical capacity to glean the implications, and limitations, of technologies as they emerge and become woven into the students’ lives. In a campus environment, that means knowing why not to trust Google to turn up the best sources for a research paper in its top returns, or appreciating the implications of surrendering personal data [...] to third parties on the Web.

Arguing that there should be new standards for tech literacy and that most students don’t meet them implies a third piece—one that is likely to make course designers hem and haw: You need to teach them. “Nobody, in their class—their biology class, their chemistry class, their literature class, sociology—wants to add a unit of technological literacy,” Zvacek says. “The plate’s full.”

Continue reading for some of Zvacek’s recommendations on how educators could try to integrate discussions about tech literacy into the syllabus. It sounds like teachers have some work to do.