3 Ways Teachers Can Better Educate Our Youth

Last night I was reading this article. It discusses the ban of laptops in college classrooms across the nation and how computers are distracting students, and ultimately, ruining the teaching process. I politely disagree. We currently are flooded with information from various social sites. Why aren’t educators taking advantage of this?

Meet Them In The Middle

Instead of saying no to electronics, information and technology, educators should learn from them and embed them into their teachings. Everyone uses Facebook, Twitter and a new and upcoming service, FormSpring, so why not implement them in the way we interact and educate students. Here are some ideas.

Facebook

These articles, one and two, mention the usage of Facebook. From 2008 to 2009, Facebook usage increased 700% from 1.7 billion minutes to 13.9 billion minutes. Again folks, that is BILLIONS. Why aren’t teachers using this medium?

Example

Mr.Doe teaches English II, for 10th graders. His class is comprised of a lot of reading and writing. Mr. Doe creates a Facebook group for his 1st period English II class. In that group updates the page with reading and writing assignments.

Since students already use this medium why not utilize the platform for education? I mean, they are already on it for 13.9 billion minutes. Why not?

Twitter

Since the Chirp conference, Twitter released their company stats. The biggest one, there are 105 million registered users. Why don’t teachers use this medium to talk with their students, or engage in conversation with them

Example

Mrs. Smith teaches Intro to Public Policy at a University in Awesome. She has a class of 100 students and it’s hard to curate conversation in class. As an assignment, she puts together a twitter chat and assigns a hashtag. She narrates this chat with questions, ones would be too difficult to cover in class, to engage with students, to provide information and to see what they know.

FormSpring.me

This one is a stretch, I’ll admit, but the possibilities are great. On Formspring.me Any one can ask a question, if you a registered user, then your name appears in your question, if not it’s private. The user has the right to answer or delete any question.

Example

Mr. Kersh has assigned a paper due in three weeks to his class. The only problem is the class meets once a week. Instead of students flooding his inbox he creates a FormSpring. He gives out his public URL and tells students to direct any question to the given assignment to this medium. He can then answer the questions, post it to all, and decide which questions to answer and not answer (since 30 students ask the same question).

We are educating our future, so why not keep their attention though current mediums instead of boring them to death with PowerPoint and lectures.

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