The Social Media Revolution

This is a great 4 min. 22 second video. It speaks to the power of social media, and the challenges in teaching our students critical thinking and evaluative skills. I look at this type of message as a provocative way to illustrate the sea change that has occurred in our society. Many educators have missed this shift, and are wondering why people are yammering on about 21st century skills. They really want to be left alone to prepare their lecture notes and make copies of their handouts. They don't want to add anything new to their practice because they don't have the time.

This isn't about "in addition to". This is about "instead of."

I posted the link to Facebook and got some interesting responses. This one in particular really summed up the issues really well.

From Ellen:
I completely agree with the point of the video-social media is a major cultural change, and not a fad-but some of the data is misleading, or just plain wrong. For example, the source listed on the website (www.socialnomics.net) for the claim that Wikipedia is more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica is...Wikipedia. Hmm. Yes, *some* studies have ... Read Moreshown as many or more factual errors in EB as in Wikipedia. But it's crucial to look at the *nature* of the most damaging misinformation in Wikipedia: vandalism, pranks, corporations trashing their competitors' products, politicians defaming their opponents' character, etc. Wikipedia has stepped up their efforts to improve the credibility of their articles in the last couple of years, to their credit. But I want to look at this video (not just the Wikipedia vs. EB piece) critically. What are the larger implications of our getting our information through social media, and how should we be teaching our kids to think critically about that.

Source:
Socialnomics - Social Media Blog