Week 11/12 Social Media in Education

As someone who both remembers taking a typing class in high school (with the aid of impossibly bulky IBM computers), and has a (now retired) teacher for a father, I have mixed feelings about the usage of social media in education. I think that done well, the use of social media as a teaching tool can serve to draw responses and engagement out of students who might not normally feel comfortable speaking up in class. However, done poorly, I feel that all that's accomplished is to drive a larger wedge between student and educator. As an introvert, I generally love online classes, and abhor group work. That being said, sometimes I see educators using social media to merely fill the necessary space in the syllabus, requiring tweets and posts with little to no regard for why these methods might be employed in the first place. Social media being an ever-changing field, one that continues to evolve and grow as more people participate in its creation, I'm optimistic that the longer it's in use, the better educators will learn how to best utilize it as a tool for learning/teaching. I see social media having a much more natural and positive role within organizations than in an institution of learning. Using analytics, web teams can use social media as a boost for marketing, in order to see what the demographic of their key engagements are, and explore ways in which to better draw people in. In this emerging field, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and fear the whole "Big Brother" aspect that social media can invoke, but the more people learn how to protect themselves and their online identities from unwanted attention, I think the better we'll adjust to this ever-present online presence. It should also be said, that with user generated content, in order to have a hand in shaping the development of these emerging tools, each person has the responsibility to educate themselves and participate accordingly.