What we can learn from our students’ digital craze

This week’s readings were pretty enlightening for me because they totally shifted the way I perceive the recent obsession with social media. When I thought of the word Face book in my personal life, thoughts of glorious stalking sessions (is he really dating her) and catching up with old friends (hey…happy birthday  person I would never be saying happy birthday to if it wasn’t for technology…) came to mind. When I thought about social media in relation to teaching, I got stressed and thoughts of my students’ obsession with the digital world and secretly sneaking on Facebook during my lessons popped into my head.

These readings for the week totally changed my perceptions. Well, for the teacher bit. As for me, I still definitely associate Facebook with lurking and creeping. But as a teacher, I now conceptualize social media in a much more positive light. I love the idea of learning from the way kids so naturally interact with one another using social network venues. The kind of communication, collaboration and discourse that buzzes about social networking sites could be put to use in the classroom context to encourage students to deeply engage with one another in an academic realm.  

Opening up to the world of digital literacies as a teacher will encourage my students to shape and redefine the participatory cultures of the digital places in which they communicate.  Participating in online places and having digital identities is becoming the overarching norm, and teachers such as myself must relinquish their traditional teaching models in an effort to best attend to the needs of our students. In this fast –paced world, students need to engage in social media and online communities because navigating successfully in digital spaces opens doors to professional and social opportunities. Schools may be the only places some students will have the opportunity to access these spaces, so it is our duty as teachers to explore digital literacies with our students.

I am so happy that the readings made me realize that there is so much more to learn from social media than how to stalk your ex- boyfriend. On the contrary, every day, students are using these spaces to collaborate and negotiate. Instead of fearing online spaces, I want to embrace them and take the skills many students already have when it comes to communicating online, and hone them in to create a rich learning experience for all.