Social Media: Is there a

place for it in Education?

Opportunities and Challenges of Social Media for Education
E. Haipinge
04.08.2014
In this Presentation
What is social media?
Types and purposes of social media
Theoretical standpoint of social media use in education
Theoretical basis for social media use in education
Challenges & tensions in using social media in education
Conclusion
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What is Social Media?
It is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and
exchange of User Generated Content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, 61).
Web 2.0 refers to an online platform that enables all willing users to
continuously create and modify published content and applications in a
participatory and collaborative fashion
User Generated Content deals with the various forms of media content that
are publicly available and created by end-users (Ibid)
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Key Characteristics of Social Media
Collaboration and/or distributed authorship
Active, open-access, bottom-up participation and interactive multi-way
communication
Continuous production, reproduction, and transformation of material in use and
reuse across contexts
Openness of content, renunciation of copyright, distributed ownership
Lack of finality, open-endedness of the activity (Dohn, 2009, p. 345)
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Types of Social Media
Collaborative
Projects
Wikis
Social
Bookmarking
Online spaces
Blogs
Textual blogs
Microblogs
Rich content
blogs
Content
Communities
Video
Picture
Slides &
documents
Social
Networks
Personal
pages
Chat &
Messaging
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Collaborative Projects
These are social media that enable joint and simultaneous creation of
content by a number of users, and its two distinct types are wikis and social
bookmarking software
Wikis: a browser-based software to collaboratively write, edit and link HTML-based
documents
Social bookmarking: Collect, organise (use tags) and rate Internet links and other
media content
Online collaborative spaces: offer platforms to collaboratively work with others using
Office applications
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Blogs
These are easy-to-update websites characterized by dated
entries displayed in reverse chronological order whose
content could be text, pictures, videos, files, web links or a
combination of these
Textual, macro blogs create logged textual content
Multi-media micro blogs post various content and follow
favorite bloggers/ content
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Content Communities
Content communities are social media platforms where users share of media
content with each other
Such media may take various forms: video, pictures, PDF files or PowerPoint
presentation slides
Video communities
Picture communities
File Documents communities
Scholar/academic communities
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Social Networking Sites
These are web applications enabling users to construct a public or semi-
public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with
whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections
and those made by others within the system (Boyd & Ellison, 2008, p. 11)
Social activities network sites
Chat applications
Video call social networks
Scholar/academic and profession social networks
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Why Social Media in Education?
Traditional power relations in education altered by Internet with tasks previously
in the domain of educators now under the control of learners (searching for
information, creating spaces of interaction)
Through blogs, wikis, online video, podcasts and open educational resources,
learners are able to access content from leading lecturers and researchers around
the world
Through the use of social media, learners are able to engage and interact with
each other, aiding in motivation, participation, and collaborative knowledge
construction
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Theoretical Basis for S.M in Education:
SRL & PLE
Self-Regulated Learning (SRL): student's ability to independently and proactively
engage in self-motivating and behavioral processes that increase goal attainment
(Zimmermann, 2000)
Also defined as a skill where students must know how to set goals, what is needed to
achieve those goals, and how to actually attain these goals (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012)
Personal Learning Environments (PLEs): an outcome of social media tools enabling
learners to create, organize, and share content (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012)
PLEs use social media tools and services to help students aggregate and share resources,
participate in collective knowledge generation, and manage their own meaning making 04 August 2014 Social Media in Education 24
SRL & PLE Pedagogical Framework
Personal information
management
Social interaction
and collaboration
Information aggregation
and management
Learners create a personal or private learning space by
self-generating content and managing this content for
personal productivity or organizational e-learning tasks
(Tools: Bookmarks, blogs, wikis, notes, calendars)
Learners use social media to engage in basic sharing and
collaborative activities for self-monitoring and help/feedback
seeking purposes (Tools: social network groups, chats, blog
comment features, collaborative wiki spaces, online documents)
Learners evaluate their learning process through self-reflection
based on set learning goals. They synthesize and aggregate
information from level 1 and level 2 in order to reflect on their
overall learning experience (Tools: e-Portfolios, blogs, notes)
(Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012, p. 6)
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Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
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SRL & PLE Pedagogical Framework:
Examples of specific tools
Personal information
management
Level 1
Social interaction
and collaboration
Level 2
Information aggregation
and management
Level 3
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Theoretical Basis for S.M. in Education:
Blooms Taxonomy
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Applying Blooms Taxonomy to Social Media
Taxonomy Description Social Media Tools
Creating
Putting elements together to form a coherent or
functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new
pattern
YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, Scribd: Content
communities or social creativity sharing sites help to
share videos, pictures, and personal publications
Evaluating
Making judgments based on criteria and standards
through checking and critiquing
Blogs, wikis, Facebook groups: Social decision-
making to evaluate new ideas, consider options, and gain
general consensus
Analysing
Breaking material into constituent parts, determining
how the parts relate to one another and to an overall
structure
Skype, Facebook, Chat: Social collaboration tools
allow groups to meet, discuss, mark-up, and analyze
information
Applying
Carrying out or using a procedure through executing,
or implementing
Wikis, Google Docs, Prezi: Social file sharing tools are
a new way to share information about a specific topic
Understanding
Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic
messages through interpreting, exemplifying,
classifying, summarizing
Blogs (WordPress), Twitter: efficient to learn what is
known about a specific topic and bring forward new
ideas.
Remembering
Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant
knowledge from long-term memory
Delicious, Mendeley: Social bookmarking: helpful in
helping to remember and organize online resources
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Summary:
Blooms Taxonomy & Social Media
Bosman & Zagenczyk, 2011, p. 12
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Challenges in using Social Media in
Education
Tensions and blurred distinctions
Informal vs formal learning
Unstructured vs structured learning spaces
Teacher controlled vs learner controlled learning spaces
(personal space)
Open and closed content (quality control)
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Some pertinent questions
The web 2.0 is characterized by decentralization of authority in knowledge
creation and technology ownership. How does this affect existing traditions?
Current uses of LMS is mainly used for information retrieval and rarely for
communication among students. Can educators modify their practice when using social
media or does it offer supportive role to existing structures?
Conceptual tensions between social media and educational systems in the
views of knowledge, learning, and learning goals. Which one should be modified to
suit the needs of the other?
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Conceptual Discrepancies between Web 2.0
Practices & Educational Practices
Educational practices = acquisition metaphor, whereas Web 2.0 practices = participation
metaphor of learning (Dohn, 2009)
Educational practices have an inherent individualistic, objectivistic view of knowledge and
competence: emphasizing ownership and authorship of learning products for credit to be given
Learning is considered the acquisition the coming into possession of the knowledge and
competence that can be transferred to other contexts without major loss
Web 2.0 practices oh the other hand view learning as implicitly and explicitly participation in
knowledge construction and sharing
Therefore Web 2.0 and/or educational practices must be reshaped to fit each other, given that they
originate in different contexts
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Conclusions
Social media activities have distributive peer responsibility and no designated
experts to control the quality of interaction
Thus the application of ZPD and scaffolding is necessary guidance of learners by
teacher and better knowledgeable peers
Social media requires greater levels of self-regulation skills from learners
This has implications for school/grade level social media use appropriateness
Integrating social media in education requires an emphasis on higher order
thinking skills
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References
Bosman, L., & Zagenczyk, T. (2011). Revitalize your teaching: Creative approaches to
applying Social Media in the classroom. In White, B., King, I., & Tsang, P. (eds.), Social media
tools and platforms in learning environments (pp. 3 16). New York: Springer.
Dabbagh, N., & Kitsantas, A. (2012). Personal Learning Environments, social media, and
self-regulated learning: A natural formula for connecting formal and informal learning. The
Internet and higher education, 15(1), 3-8. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2011.06.002
Dohn, N.B. (2009). Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for education.
Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 4(3), pp. 343-363. doi: 10.1007/s11412-009-9066-8
Kaplan, A.M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and
opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53 (1), 59-68. doi:
10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003
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