Student Comprehension and Engagement of Material Increases when Teachers Engage with Social Media in the Classroom
With
Facebook finally reaching 1 million users, Twitter following close behind and
YouTube having millions of views each day, it is safe to say that social media
has become very popular, especially amongst high school and college students. According
to an article, located in USA Today, called "Teachers Embrace Social Media in Class" students spend approximately 238 minutes a week on Facebook and
101 minutes a week on Twitter. That’s a total of 339 minutes or 5 hours and 39
minutes spent on just two of many social media sites. Being a teacher, it is
important to recognize these trends and if possible, incorporate appropriate
technologies into the classroom and the curriculum in order to capture
interests and accelerate learning. Incorporating networks such as YouTube, Facebook,
Pintrest and Twitter to supplement material can capture interest and excitement,
which can lead to better comprehension and engagement. In my schooling
experience, I have had many teachers show videos on YouTube as a supplement to
the material. Watching YouTube or any online video usually helps clarify
information or provides additional real world examples. YouTube tends to help
those students who are visual learners better grasp and understand the
material. Social media can also be used in order to obtain information faster
than it would be obtained in a traditional manner. For example, a student can
easily post a survey question on Facebook and receive almost instantaneous
feedback from their friends and followers allowing them to collect research in
no time at all. Along with collecting information, social media can also be
used as a way to distribute information or research quickly. Before the use of
social media increased, students would have to use snail mail or e-mail to
distribute information which is not nearly as fast as social media such as
instant Twitter updates or Facebook statuses.
Carole
Gilbert, a Montgomery County High School teacher, helps me understand how using
social media creates better understanding and engagement for her students.
Expanding the Use of Social
Media in the Classroom can Further Enhance Learning
Using social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter
are preferable for students simply because of the ease of use and familiarity
with navigation. Since students are regularly using these sites outside of the
classroom for their leisure, it may be easier for teachers to incorporate these
popular sites throughout lessons to aid learning. Facebook and Twitter can be
used to encourage conversation between peers, or to reach out and understand
the opinions of others such as famous celebrities, or authors. This way, the
student is not always only interacting with their classmates, but rather
learning how to communicate, have conversations and express opinions with others.
Creating a class blog as a supplement to learning was another idea from an
article featured on How to Learn.
This site describes creating a classroom blog as a way to enhance learning with
topics that students do not have much experience with, topics that may be
harder to grasp, or topics that are not as dense and do not have an abundant of
interesting information. “Blogging
can supplement any subject matter, but it is perhaps especially easy to
integrate into writing and social science classrooms. Blogging about relevant
topics and commenting on classmates’ posts can provide a richer experience for
students than traditional writing assignments.” Using a blog may be a form of
social media that students are not as familiar with and may require additional
instruction of use and navigation; however, in the end, the outcomes and
rewards will be worth the extra bit of instruction.
It
has become more and more common for college professors to use social media throughout the semester. It is important that students have background
knowledge about the ways these sites work and are used as a supplement to
course material. Many universities at very minimum use websites, like ELMS,
where students can find information about the courses they are enrolled in.
This is an important reason why students should be familiar and able to
navigate websites such as these. Other professors engage more with social media
creating assignments using class blogs, or Twitter so that students can
interact with one another along with other professionals. Basic instruction in early
education allows students to have already identified these tools allowing them
to be able to put them to better use when using them in college courses.
Molly, a Communication major at the University of Maryland, explains why she thinks social media was beneficial to her in her college classes.
