As Ewan McIntosh noted on his blog before the event, the strapline for this event: “How is social media shaping the future of learning?”, gave our panelists a broad topic to discuss, but at Matt Locke’s capable hands the debate soon narrowed down to a few overall memes:
- - Use of digital media in the classroom
- - The demand for qualifications-led publishing
- - Integration with existing social media products
- - The concept of “control” in the education system
The debate around these issues was feisty, with Ewan McIntosh providing the perspective of the technologically-savvy, modern teacher - Ewan has blogged his opinions on the debate here. Ewan’s perspective is that students get a lot more from creating their own content using free tools than they do from using publishers’ packages. One example he gave was of Sandaig Primary School, where pupils collaborated to create wonderful audio-poetry at a minimal cost.
The other side of the debate was cogently argued by Owen White of Pearson Knowledgebox, and members of the audience, who stated that whilst publishers recognise the value for pupils in using the technologies and techniques outlined by Ewan when creating products, they must also respond to the demands of the LEAs and an education system which places an ever-increasing emphasis on exam results in assessing the progress of both pupils and teachers.
Sarah Gavin from the social network Bebo explained how Bebo is providing a space in which their users, mainly from the teen demographic, can discuss ideas with their peers which they might not be able to debate in physical spaces, where peer pressure can have a limiting effect on the topic of conversation. As a result, Beboers are becoming increasingly involved in campaigning on social issues, and Bebo has set up Bebo Be One to help them to navigate around these ideas.
Sarah also described how schemes on Bebo such as writing continuations to stories, and composing poetry, have been phenomenally successful, with many thousands of children taking part. And although Sarah sees the average Beboer’s 36-minute daily visit to the site as an extension to their social lives, often driven by the relationships they establish at school, she agreed that Bebo has not become the de facto destination for young people to discuss their homework. Is this a niche that could be filled by publishers?
All parties recognised the issue of control in education, with Owen White pointing out that despite the innumerable technological advances in the past century (e.g. radio, TV and software), formal education is still reliant on the principle of one teacher standing in front of a classroom of pupils, creating a power relationship between the teacher and pupils which some teachers can be reluctant to undermine. The fear of loss of control was highlighted as a very real factor for some teachers in their decisions about what techniques, and hence what media, to use in the classroom.
The debate revealed that there is still plenty of road left for all parties to travel before social media becomes mainstream in education, but change in that direction has happened, and publishers want to be, and are already becoming, a part of that change. Additionally, it was suggested that the educational environment itself would have to alter radically if we were to see a full-scale adoption of social media in the classroom. It would be interesting to discuss this topic in further detail on a future occasion.
Online would like to extend its thanks to the panellists for giving up their time to give us the benefit of their experience and knowledge, and to everyone who attended for helping to provoke lively debate during and after the session. We were asked many times to put on more events of this type in future, and we will be delighted to oblige. Please don’t hesitate to get in contact if you would like to be in the audience next time. We’ve also set up a LinkedIn group here - please feel free to join up and meet the other delegates.
Posted: November 28th, 2007 under Education, Publishing, Web 2.0, Events, Education Unbound.
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