A lot of people think social media is something you do after school, not during school hours. However, many feel educators should stop trying to repress the huge amounts of energy young people devote to social media and think about how to harness that energy and use it to get more out of academic classes.
Sadly, few schools have formal social media strategies (apart from blocking them on their networks). What they are losing out on is the power of a network or networks between the school, its students, their parents, teachers and the community at large. Below are five ways schools can use social media to benefit students academically.
Promoting content
While it is true that a lot of content generated on social media is 'noise', it's not only that. If you can be selective and build a relevant network of users to share your school's content with, the benefit to your users is tangible.
We need to educate on how to effectively use social media, instead of assuming everyone on Twitter or Facebook is wasting their own time and others'.
Even a small network of schools would make for a large and valuable content base. Imagine if that network also included former students and the schools they went on to attend.
Research
How can a social media tool like Twitter or Delicious be any good for research? Twitter can be as powerful an information gathering tool as the highest rated, longest standing RSS feeds, but it does require maintenance and diligence to find the right people to listen to and follow.
As with all other research tools, diligent use of social media will return valuable results. Schools can kick this process off by breaking the mould and not penalising students who use social media for research. They should instead reward them for using the latest, most updated sources - provided they are indeed quotable sources.
Sourcing and collaboration
Getting an insight into what opinions your crowd truly holds can make or break the success of any effort. Social media tools make interaction with your user base extremely simple. Any online community, be it Facebook, Twitter or a Google group, is not only useful - it's also a tool for active engagement.
Moreover, social media helps students to learn how to collaborate. Many educators believe collaboration is the necessary skill for students in the 21st century; so much so, overseas schools have made it a central part of their curriculum.
The list includes Duke University, which uses crowd sourcing to both grade and teach, the University of Utah and SOS Classroom in Los Angeles.
Teaching collaboration is easily done using Google Docs so when students carry out cooperative learning assignments they don't have to be in the same space.
They can work on the assignment wherever and whenever is convenient for them.
There may be bigger, better ways of teaching collaboration, but Google Docs is free, easy to use and very popular, which makes it an ideal solution to teach a big idea.
Publishing with social tools
Given the advent of soft formats and e-readers, it makes sense to publish articles and research online and push this work through social media channels. This not only adds value to a school's social media channels, but benefits those following your web presence.
Furthermore, this makes the research a lot more accessible, since search engines will be able to pick up any string within it and return it in search results, as well as making it easier to distribute and instantaneous in delivery. This extremely rapid turn-around allows for easier collaboration and fresher, more recent sources for research purposes.
Personal brand
All too often, young job hunters feel they have nothing to 'sell'. This is understandable as, for the most part, their CV will be similar to that of their classmates.
Having a website, blog, portfolio, or Twitter feed serves young people very well, for it allows them to prove their usefulness and expertise within their subjects, as well as launch an online identity for themselves.
This allows users (people, who after all may be hiring) to easily identify and connect with students, giving them a leg-up in the ladder of life.
We used to insist on 'outside interests' being listed in a CV, so as to demonstrate that the person has other areas of knowledge or expertise.
An online presence, particularly a well-cultivated personal brand, has a similar effect, but stronger, owing to the fact that it is visible to all and proves that not only does the candidate have strong knowledge of the field showcased, but also a robust web expertise which is, and shall continue to be, a key hiring point for job seekers.
In today's world, schools, more than any other institution, cannot afford to be late in embracing change. The world in which their students will be expected to perform will be different to anything previous generations have known, so being proactive and developing teaching that looks to the future is key to being relevant in today's flat and ever more connected world.
Mental health nursing article
The author of the article on mental health nursing entitled 'Blending nursing with psychology', published in this section last week, was Martin Ward, not Michael Ward.