USE OF ICT/SOCIAL MEDIA IN EDUCATION
Social and digital media have shaped a transformational process in the way learning is developed by new teachers (Erixon, 2010). He found an initial limited use of new media, followed by a period of expansion as more resources that are subject specific become available. He draws on Durkheim’s analysis of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ and notes that the sacred in schools is associated with safe and practical pedagogical methods and resources.
Research (Hsu, 2011) has looked at the type of teachers who are likely to assign students ICT related activities and the nature of the tasks themselves. He found those teachers who infrequently use ICT in their own lives are less likely to use it with students. Hsu concludes that those staff who are competent in building websites are those most likely to assign ICT related tasks.
A review of social media
Twitter represents an excellent opportunity for classroom teachers. The sign up process is straightforward and allows the user to ‘tweet’ information of up to 60 characters- this is then read by anyone who signs up to ‘follow’ the user, viewed in a stream of information.
A large number of news agencies, commentators, economists and bloggers tweet information daily. This can then be re-tweeted to other followers. Should I choose to follow Paul Krugman, for example, and feel one of his tweets could be of interest to my students, I can choose to re-tweet it to a ‘list’ of my students who have signed up to follow me on the site. On a daily basis, a teacher can tweet information to a class, say on homework deadlines, class activity or an item in the news.
Whether students choose to act on the information is, however, a matter for them, though a teacher could award prizes, or produce a weekly ‘newsletter’ of the best tweets from students via a file sharing website such as Storify (see below).
The hashtag (#) allows tweets to be sorted. I could for example search #Indianeconomy and find tweets posted on that topic. Tweets can also be sorted by ‘favouriting’ them and returning to them later.
Twitter helps support online tutoring and supports independent study though the tweeting of links to articles and video clips, as well as useful websites for exam skills or career options.
There is also a group of teachers of economics and business who follow each other and share information and advice on teaching key topics. This is centred around Jim and Geoff Riley at www.tutor2u.net Finally, twitter helps students keep up to date with the latest news via the smartphone App. Instant information is available from economic and financial institutions. These feeds can even be used by students in class. Students can reply to the economist or institution they follow- one of my students had a reply from David Smith (Times Economics correspondent) over a query about his book Free Lunch. The online polling website www.polleverywhere.com can also be used via students making their voting decisions via Twitter.
Storify allows its users to gather together information from other social media and to organise it with their own narrative. Writers can gather a set of tweets or a video embedded on Facebook. In this sense it is rather like an online student project on issues in the news. It could be used in economics for an online report say, on commentators views of the budget and be open for view by other web users.
Pinterest allows the user to collect images and store them in sets of online noticeboards. The principle is of the photo album- a set of images with some commentary from the collector. The user can upload photographs or web articles, providing they contain a useable image, with one photo chosen to identify the board. Users can put boards together individually or allow others to ‘pin’ on their boards. This is a great mechanism for teachers to collect resources and images from the web. An obvious use would be asking students to collect examples of demerit goods, a series of articles on quantitative easing or images associated with an economic boom or recession.
Blogging is a mechanism for students to express their opinions and share these with others. Sites such as Word Press allow both teachers and students to writer newspaper ‘leader’ style columns that can be viewed and rated by others. These sites also allow additional contributions from other readers. They present a useful opportunity for teachers to develop the skills at the higher level of Bloom’s taxonomy, such as evaluation and application. www.tutor2u.net now encourages economics students to submit articles for publication.
Some schools and Colleges now have their own Facebook page where students can share comments, video clips and ‘likes’ about topics or the institution in general.
A caveat is that staff and pupils must agree a code of conduct as to how the various sites are used. These might mean ensure all comments are purely education and topic related. Schools and Colleges can appoint an administrator to ensure this and set up appropriate firewalls to ensure access is limited to those desired.
Social media are used by young people on a daily basis- indeed, many are more familiar with the application of these sites than the average teacher. However, they present a great opportunity for use to share information and opinions and activities such as ‘pinning’ and ‘tweeting’ can indicate student understanding of a topic. They can also be used to stimulate student interest beyond the use of a core text or handout. Wider social development
ICT can also have a significant role in poverty reduction (Tas, 2011). Students are able to work collaboratively across continents and within countries across mediums such as blogs, emails and Skype conversations. This supports the use of peer mentoring or the joint development of classroom and resources by teachers. Websites and social media channels offer a form of tutoring which allows students to access expertise beyond that provided from their original teacher.
In this context it is argued (Pelgrum, 2011) that ICT improves the monitoring ability of the Principal observing the agent. This could be teaching monitoring student attainment via their scores on a self marked online test; a school observing the performance of teacher educators in a similar context; and/or a Local Authority comparing the performance of its schools and teachers over a period of time. Research (Dlodlo,2009) looked at the impact of ICT on female education in South Africa; others (Lv, 2011) contrasted the use of ICT in education in urban and rural China, noting a widening gap in attainment and accessibility between such regions, noting the key variables in the acceptance and use of ICT as teaching practice, funding, equipment and the institutional educational framework. He proposes the development of ICT packages and approaches that are customised for use in rural areas, where teachers and students may have limited use and experience- he proposes that ‘canned’ products developed for wealthier schools must be adapted.
Bibliography
Dlodlo, N (2009). Access to ICT education for girls and women in rural South Africa: A case study, Technology in Society, Vol.31(2), pp.168-175 Beadle, P (2010). How to Teach. Crown House Publishing, ISBN-10: 184590393 Erixon, P (2010). School subject paradigms and teaching practice in lower secondary Swedish schools influenced by ICT and media in Computers & Education, 2010, Vol.54(4), pp.1212-1221 Beadle, P (2011). Bad Education, the Guardian columns. Crown House Publishing, ISBN-10: 1845906837 Hsu, S (2011). Who assigns the most ICT activities? Examining the relationship between teacher and student usage, Computers & Education, Vol.56(3), pp.847-855
Lv, J (2011). ICT education in rual areas of southwest China: A case study of Zhongxian County, Chongqing. 6th International Conference on Computer Science & Education,pp.681- 685, IEEE Pelgrum, W (2011). Monitoring in Education- An Overview, in Assessing the Effects of ICT in Education: Indicators, Criteria and Benchmarks for International Comparisons, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, OECD
Tas, E M. (2011). ICT Education for Development- a case study, Procedia Computer Science, Vol 3, p507-512 60 ways to use Twitter, Teachthought http://www.teachthought.com/social-media/60- ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom-by-category/ Accessed 26.02.2013