It's a mobile, social media world
When I bought my first iPhone, I was excited that I could get sports scores instantly in the palm of my hands. Juvenile, I know, but I never thought I would be using my phone for learning.
Moving forward, like many, my iPhone is glued to my hip. I communicate with it, find entertainment on it, document my health issues with it, and teach my students with it. It's like a third arm.
For students in my classroom, the smartphone is their lifeline. Ask a teenager to put up their phones, and after 15 minutes you can see the anxiety rising in their faces. For this, why, don't we as educators, help students learn on these devices.
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Mobile Learning
Mobile technology's high ownership has translated into increased usage to support student learning; this is particularly true with smartphones, which are conducive to agile tasks such as communication, easy information access, and photography (Chen, et. al, 2018).
Although usage for academic purposes has clearly increased, several challenges remain in implementing mobile technology in higher education. These challenges include a disconnect between student and instructor views of mobile technologies, a lack of pedagogical support or training for instructors, and alack of effective technical support for mobile learning (Chen, et. al, 2018).
My son has access to an iPad in his second grade classroom. On the Safari web browser, he looks up pictures when the teacher gives them free time on the device. Yes, my eight year-old can browse the web better than I can! In fact, his teacher, cleverly in my opinion, recently told his class if they do well on a series of tests, they could have a BYOD day. BYOD is Bring Your Own Device. The motivation worked! My son was excited when he got off the bus and told me he would be allowed to take his Kindle Tablet to school!
While the day was just a free day for the students, BYOD is not uncommon. Every student in my class has access to a smartphone and a Google Classroom. Why not use them for education?
Schools fight mobile devices, but why not create lessons that those devices can be utilized. Making movies, conducting market research, photographing experiments, or taking a quiz. I put Bell Ringers in Google Form, so students can easily use their cell phones to answer.
Apps such as iNaturalist, developed by the California Academy of Science and National Geographic, allow students to submit images from nature and have those images identified and catalogued (Kutyla, 2020).
Filmmaking is a great way for teachers to utilize mobile learning. Students can use the film and editing tools available on their smartphones to become auteurs—artists with the vision to tell a personally meaningful visual story. When students tell their stories with film, they think of themselves as filmmakers. The art of filmmaking is more about storytelling than about technology (Farber, 2022).
Apps such as Loom, Flip, PlayPosit, Adobe Express, Green Screen by Do Ink, Edpuzzle, iMovie, Screencastify, and WeVideo, can easily help students in this lesson.
Mobile learning can also help students with special needs or English Language Learners. Apps like Duolingo, can easily help students learn new languages while using gamelike techniques.
Now with the recent addition of artificial intelligence (AI), teachers can create a custom GPT tutor to help students in the classroom. OpenAI’s GPTs can be trained specifically on your course content and learning goals, as well as on your students’ learning progression, misconceptions, and preferences. With this knowledge, they can become highly effective tutors (Stauffer, 2024).
YouTube: How to Make Learning as Addictive as Social Media by Luis Von Ahn
Social Media
Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, YouTube, Pintrest, SnapChat, TikTok, and more. These are where our students are living online.
As learning content developers and Instructional Designers, we often think of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) as the ideal teaching and knowledge sharing tool. However, social media platforms offer features and functionality that can be leveraged to supplement and complement the use of a traditional LMS:
1. They are widely available to anyone with an internet connection.
2. They are "open," which makes them more broadly accessible.
3. They are "social" by definition, unlike LMSs that are more hierarchical and "close looped."
4. Like many front-line LMS tools, social media platforms support multi-media. However, unlike LMS, the "reach" of social media goes beyond the curated content available on formal teaching networks.
5. While many proprietary (conventional) LMS networks are locked behind walls and other barriers, most social media networks are easily accessible. Learners, therefore, more readily gravitate towards these types of communities.
Teachers can use social media as learning tools in the following ways:
1. Create a Facebook group for your class - share funny memes, post notes to remind students about important assignments, encourage students to post links related to the lessons, or set discussion topics.
2. Blogging - How about using blogging as a tool for homework assignment submission? Each student can have a personal blog where they will share book reviews, history research papers, and other assignments they usually submit in print.
3. Twitter/X - You can introduce a daily hashtag related to a certain topic you elaborated in class, and ask each student to discover a fun fact related to it. Then, they should post a tweet under that hashtag, and the entire class will follow the activity. This is a great way for the students to realize how the things they learn at school are being implemented in the real world.
4. Pinterest - Pinterest is a great platform for organizing educational resources. When you browse and locate something you could use – you just pin it in a board you created for the relevant category. You can also use Pinterest as a search engine for educational content. Just write your topic in the search bar and you’ll discover some cool resources you can present in the classroom.
5. YouTube - This video sharing platform is a great option for introducing the flipped classroom concept into your teaching methods. You can share educational lectures and resources in video format, and expect your students to watch the material instead of writing homework. Then, you can discuss the lecture and do the homework in class.
Media Literacy
Social media can have a great impact on students' health. Students need to learn the skills of news and media literacy, and specifically social media literacy, so they can figure out what’s real, what’s exaggerated, and what’s just made up (Weinberg, 2022).
The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) defines media literacy as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication. As NAMLE puts it, media literacy provides us with the skills necessary to “both comprehend the messages we receive and effectively utilize these tools to design and distribute our own messages. Being literate in a media age requires critical thinking skills that empower us as we make decisions, whether in the classroom, the living room, the workplace, the boardroom, or the voting booth” (Lonergan, 2022).
Social media literacy skills show teenage and younger students how to sensibly review data on social media sites rather than indiscriminately ingesting and propelling what they find out into the universe (Weinberg, 2022).
Questions students can ask while looking at information on social media:
- Who authored or shared the social media message?
- When was the social media account created?
- What values and perspectives do the messages convey?
- Does the message make sense, and can it stand on its own?
- Can you validate this information from other sources?
Media literacy doesn’t need to be “another thing” to teach. Teaching media literacy can help combat the current misinformation epidemic and empower students. Being media literate empowers students to ask questions, make sound judgments rooted in fact and evidence (Lonergan, 2022).
The cross-curricular skills inherent in media literacy prepare students how to know what to believe in the digital age, imparting skills they need to become smart, active consumers and creators of information and engaged, informed participants in civic life (Lonergan, 2022).
Whether we approve of social media or prefer in-person socializing, high school and younger students continue to like, share, and repost daily. So it’s important that young adults learn to process digital social information before doing anything else with it (Weinberg, 2022).
References
Chen, B., Bauer, S., Salter, A., Bennett, L., & Seilhamer, R. (2018, April 23). Changing MobileLearning Practices: AMultiyear Study 2012–2016. EDUCAUSE REVIEW. Retrieved February 3, 2024, from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/4/changing-mobile-learning-practices-a-multiyear-study-2012-2016
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