When the Vancouver School Board announce that they were creating a new Social Media Policy of the School District and that the were looking for some public input, I immediately started that convo on Twitter. Soon the Vice Chair of the School Board jumped into the convo and, eventually, I submitted my two cents in the mix (writing about it in an earlier post, too).
The more I look at Social Media in the world of education, the more I see our system (in North America), banning or demonizing the medium, rather than adopting it. I have to wonder why.
I understand that the education system is slow to adopt many new things, because they need to review, assess, plan and develop what ever needs to be added into the curriculum. Problem is, what’s new is coming at them so fast that the old way of adopting something new into the system simply cannot keep up. This is especially true for Social Media, as it changes on literally a daily basis. What our schools, colleges and universities need to do is look to what others are doing and tap their own communities for assistance.
In Singapore, one of the countries leading Asia in economic and technology adoption, Social Media has been used in the classroom since 2009, in a wide variety of ways, even including the parents in the educational process so that they could learn with their kids (this is an excellent post on what they, and others, are doing).
The Eudora School District, in Eudora, Kansas, has embraced Social Media as a means to better engage and encourage learning within the student body. More than anything else, they found the opportunity to educate the children in the district on the safe and proper use of Social Media, all while creating rich and rewarding content.
Apple understood the digital needs of kids today and made their iAuthor app available for free, allowing teachers to create and develop their own digital text books that are both current and interactive, with video, internet links and Social Media communication channels.
Entrepreneurs see the value of teaching kids by using tools that that they are familiar with, as well. Twiducate, for instance, is specifically designed for schools to integrate Social Media Networking into an Education System. British Columbia based TicTalking has an application that can be integrated into Websites. This app allows School District to, essentially, create their own Social Media network that not only generates conversation and learning content via teachers, student and parents, but also analyzes that content to track trends. This allows the District to become more proactive to the needs of everyone who use the District resources, that arise from the conversations being had online.
More than anything else, schools teaching and using Social Media helps prepare these students for the future in the real world market place. Employers are starting to see the value of Social Media as a reference tool, to better assess an job applicant. Whether it is verifying their credentials on LinkedIn or checking out their online profile on Facebook, the future employer impression that kids make today will follow them into the employment world of tomorrow. The Internet, after all, never forgets.
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