Social media - education as social

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Social media can be seen as contentious, however, if we’re coming at it from the angle  of should or shouldn’t we use this technology, we’re looking at the issue upside down.  Paper or screens, the question is always how should we teach and learn, not what should we learn with. Internationally the pedagogical focus is creative, innovative and resilient learners “‘creating learning environments that challenge students to become actively engaged, independent, lifelong learners inside and outside of formal learning spaces should be the critical aim of change in teaching strategies’.” (Salavuo, 2008) . In NZ we have ‘learning to learn’ and ‘life long learners’ (NZC, 2007, p8). 

My question is how can social media enhance things for my learners and how can the *community* aspects of learning be enhanced. 

I teach art history online. Challenges include : limited time with the class, and student inexperience with online learning. For my online class, social media is transformational. We use Google+ and Knowledge Forum to connected as a community. These platforms take us beyond an individual linear process. My students are able to stay connected as a class, ask questions, share content and connect with other learners. A challenge that we face is students acting as agents of their own learning. While some are quick to share ‘what do you think about xxx’,  many are still shy of sharing  in this way. They don’t see themselves as the expert or that they have the authority to do this. Clearly there is work for me to do in orientating students towards knowledge creation.

Previously students have celebrated it as making the biggest difference in their learning. A highlight in 2015 was excellence students freely building onto each others study notes, sharing insights with each other. This year we just haven’t reached the same depth. Students have been reluctant to share with each other in class and certainly haven’t been a organic community sharing. I’ve been reflecting on how to foster a knowledge building culture a and a sense of community within a class as I strongly believe in the educational value of collaboration. “although students may be reluctant to take part in group activities, they can benefit from the experience of  pooling  knowledge  and  sharing  diverse  views.” (Sharples, et al. 2016) I have discovered this year, that it is essential for learning design to centre around developing connections. If connections are weak and trust is low it is difficult to generate meaningful group communication. Further to the wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973) of engagement, is the reframing of how learners view the act of learning. The community needs to become familiar with the principles of knowledge building in order to implicitly understand learning as a dynamic entity and knowledge as continually improvable. (Lai, 2015)

While students have had instances of sharing and advancing knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003) together in my class, I would love to enhance their epistemic agency and metacognition through the use of a reflective journal such as a student blog. This has the potential to be incredibly profound as students revisit and build open their learning. “visualizing community knowledge advances … may well lead to more effective assessment as well as more powerful supports for knowledge creation.” (Hong and Scardamalia, 2014, p. 287). 

The most powerful impact thus far though has been blogging. I began blogging with a sense of professional responsibility, to model ’learn, create, share’ as the lead teacher in my school for Toki Pounamu, this has become transformational. Blogging connected me with educators I would not have otherwise crossed paths with, the common factor simply being passionate about pedagogy. “The digital age we live in has made it so much easier to share with our colleagues as we enjoy the same affordances our children experience - anywhere, anytime, any pace and with/from anyone.” (Burt, 2015)  It is so easy to pour all of our energy into our classroom empires and forget about the broader learning community, or even our own learning as teachers. It can be challenging to share professional learning, yes there are barriers (standing out, fearing that we don’t have the expertise, being eloquent enough), however I feel now that I have a professional responsibility to share my learning. We expect our students to take risks, create and share, but how much of this do we model in our practice?  “Seek and respond to feedback from learners, colleagues and other education professionals, and engage in collaborative problem solving and learning focused collegial discussions” (Education Council ,2017) 

Burt, D. (2015, February 07). It Starts with US: LCS Pedagogy [Web blog post]. Retrieved November 10, 2017, from http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/it-starts-with-us-lcs-pedagogy.html

Lai, Kwok-Wing. (2015, November). What is knowledge building? Presented at the NetNZ workshop 2015, Christchurch.

Hong, H.-Y., & Scardamalia, M. (2014). Community knowledge assessment in a knowledge building environment. Computers & Education, 7, 279–288.

New Zealand, Education Council. (2017, June). Our Code, our standards. Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

New Zealand, Ministry of Education. (2007). New Zealand Curriculum (p. 8). Wellington: Learning Media Limited.

Rittel, Horst, and Melvin Webber; "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,”, pp. 155–169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., Amsterdam, 1973. [Reprinted in N. Cross (ed.), Developments in Design Methodology, J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1984, pp. 135–144.]

Salavuo, M. (2008). Social media as an opportunity for pedagogical change in music education. Journal of Music, Technology and Education, 1(2 and 3), 121–136. 

Scardamalia, M. (2003). Knowledge building environments: Extending the limits of the possible in education and knowledge work. In A. DiStefano,   K. E. Rudestam, & R. Silverman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distributed learning (pp. 269- 272). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf