Currently, social media does not have a very prominent stance in the education scene. In today's age, one would still have to rely on emails to contact their teachers if they have a question. This can be a very frustrating time for a student as it may be a question of an urgent matter and for many reasons, including school policy, many teachers do not give out their personal cell numbers to students if they have a urgent question. With new apps coming out for smartphones, this should make communication between student and teacher much more efficient and timely, for example if teachers were required to set up twitter accounts or Facebook pages, the student may simply Tweet the teacher or post on the page, which then a notification will pop up on the teachers smartphone allowing the teacher to, hopefully, respond in a very timely matter. There are also many benefits to teachers setting up YouTube accounts for a particular course. Using my course as an example, there are many skills that we are required to learn over our 2 years and currently we must rely on the teacher (if they allow us to record them in class) or other YouTube videos made by teachers in another school. The obvious down to this is that what is the method shown in one school may be different from the method shown in another school, which may leave the student more confused then when the initially searched for the video. If the school were to set up a "Nursing @ Sheridan" Youtube account, they would be able to post videos of what is currently taught at the school, allowing the student to visually witness the material over and over again rather than rely on written notes. Unfortunately, very few schools are already using the above methods to reach out to students as doing so would require policy change regarding teacher-student communication. In the future, one will hopefully be able to live in a world where teachers reply in to tweets, Facebook messages or even texts from students who wish to ask a question.
For other ways in which social media may be integrated into education in the future, look here:
http://edudemic.com/2012/07/a-teachers-guide-to-social-media/
Although i agree with the above points and wish that they would make communication with teachers an easier and more efficient process I believe that self care is important for all professionals. If we were to gain access to a Facebook, twitter or cellphone contact for the faculty it would not only be an issues of professional boundaries but also of self care. If our teachers are constantly accessible than when are they taking time for themselves away from there jobs. This article http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0606-mclean.html discusses the importance of self care as a professional and as a student i found it very interesting.
ReplyDelete