Social Media in the Classroom: Advantage or Disadvantage?

Teachers Tweet and Students Skype as Classrooms Go Digital


     While reading this article found in my local newspaper, the Home News Tribune, the first quote that really caught my attention was “Social media is altering the educational landscape.”  A statement like this immediately worries me, for I feel as though social media and the classroom are a lethal combination. From my experience, social media is the escape that students quite often turn to when they want a distraction from their school work. That is why this article intrigued me. I was very curious upon reading the introduction as to how teachers made it possible to incorporate social media networking sites such as Twitter into their curriculum to enhance student participation and interest without it becoming a complete distraction resulting in failure to convey a particular lesson’s themes.
     The article mentions that since most students belong to a social networking site already, they might as well use it to their advantage when dealing with school projects and group collaboration. I was beginning to become slightly convinced that certain social media technologies might be more beneficial than not when I then read that a rule banning cell phone use in school was lifted when teachers found a certain educational need for them in the classroom. Although I found the newest technology called eClicker in which students can text quiz answers to their teachers and receive almost immediate feedback quite interesting, I am still a little leery. The article states, “Any cellphone use as a learning tool must balance functionality with the need to assure that the devices are not used in disruptive ways,” wrote Freehold Regional Schools Superintendent Charles B. Sampson. “Certainly smartphones can be used as a powerful learning tool in the proper context.”  Be that as it may, how is it possible to monitor every student and to be sure that they are using their cell phones for educational matters and not sneaking text messages or deceitfully playing games or browsing the internet or social media networks on their phones? Although we have access to a host of information that might be pertinent to a certain lesson at our fingertips, I don’t believe that means students should be allowed to have access to their cell phones during a lesson.
     I do have to say, however, that other social media type of technologies listed in the article are becoming ever more present in the classroom, especially in higher education. Although my high school tried to incorporate technology into our different curriculums, I never had to rely on technology as much as when I entered college. From the school email, to Blackboard, to Google Docs, I can see how technology is making its way to becoming not only a convenience, but a useful tool in the classroom. However, I am still unsure about how I feel about using social media in the classroom. While I frequently partake in social networking websites, especially to converse with students about group work or forming study groups and things of that nature pertaining to school work, I am not convinced that it will fit in well with classroom curriculum with elementary and middle school students. It might be beneficial in high school, but I feel the only place it might not be detrimental to learning is in the college classroom where students possess a level of maturity where they can separate a distraction from a relevant lesson.