Previous posts in this series tracked the development of educational technology over 40 years. I first started working in the field of educational technology in January 1976, at a time when technology was used more for teaching than it was for learning. That is, the technologies that dominated educational technology in the 1970s were technologies that were primarily teacher controlled and oriented toward instruction.
Around the turn of the century we all began to be aware of a surge in the use of the Web for creating content. By 2006 several social networking sites were enjoying surges in popularity, including MySpace, Bebo and of course, Facebook. 2006 was also the year Twitter was launched. Other tools such as wikis, blogs and podcasts also began to be used in education, at first tentatively, and then as embedded features in various programmes of study.
A key attraction of these technologies is that they are inherently participatory. Social media lend themselves naturally to support learning through discussions, collaboration and sharing. They also have the capacity to support personal learning. They are vital components of the web, and social media are important for education - because learning is essentially social and personal.
My initial interest in researching the social web stemmed from some early work my colleagues and I did around wikis and blogs in medical education in 2005-2006. I then began also to experiment with wikis as alternatives to Learning Management Systems in teacher education around 2006-2008. What fascinated me the most about the use of wikis in education was that content was never complete, but was always a work in progress. We enjoyed great success, with many students learning through creating, sharing and editing content online, a collateral effect of which was better writing outcomes.
Several research papers followed including The Good, the Bad and the Wiki, and also a number of research papers presented at international conference. I also conducted research into the use of blogs in a number of educational contexts, which also yielded several publications. Ultimately, learning through social media tools is now embedded within my professional practice, with students creating their own content before, during, and as a direct consequence, of teaching sessions. A vibrant user generated content culture has existed in my own institution for several years, and this is strengthened with each successive student cohort. Not only do they share their blogs and videos, students also connect with experts and fellow students beyond the walls of the university and in so doing, they participate directly in the education discourse. Social media is one of the most versatile, and very personal technologies available to teachers. We are only just beginning to understand the power and potential it has to enhance and extend learning.
Photo by Tomas Castelazo on Wikimedia Commons
Previous posts in this series:
First Days 1976-1980
The Moving Image 1976-1986
Computers 1980-1990
Networks 1986-1995
Telematics 1996-2003
Games based learning 1986-present
#40years of educational technology: Social media by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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