Facilitating Learning with Social Media: Challenges for Pedagogy, Schools and Systems | W10 Discussion Synthesis - Instructor | Forum

This week’s guided reading question asked you to present “a realistic recommendation [for or against] adding social media to your chosen learning environment and discuss the role of the instructor in implementing this vision.” Each of you chose a different student population: K-12 children (ages 9-17), college age learners, and adult professional learners (teachers). Selin considered the ethical challenges of integration a social network site like Facebook into K-12 teaching, especially for informal, afterschool uses. Madison considered the incorporation of social media like Facebook and Twitter in college/graduate school classrooms for professional learning purposes. She raised a number of concerns with the blurring of personal and professional personas, which these social media not only enable but promote. Brittney considered the integration of social media like Pinterest and TeachersPayTeachers (TPT) as part of teachers’ professional development. She highlighted the advantages of these informal networks for collaboration, community-building, resource-sharing and more. This week’s posts raised a number of questions such as:

Questions

What did you most take-away from this week’s forum discussion?

What must educators consider when designing or implementing instruction with ____ [insert choice of social media/technology]?

What do you see as the biggest threats to facilitating learning with [chosen media] in education?

Do you see any connections between what you read and discussed this week and weeks 1-9 in this course?