FACING FACEBOOK:  
Social Media In and Out of the Classroom


 
Students' use of social media
Teens spend about as much time on social networking and websites as they do watching TV

73% of teens & young adults use social networks (Pew)

80% of young adults on Facebook

Average user spends more time on Facebook than Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Wikipedia combined (Neilsen)
They...
Pick classes on ratemyprofessor.com
Get to know classmates through facebook
Share videos on YouTube
Share photos on flickr



Physics Dept., University of Colorado 
Boulder


Stephanie Chasteen
What we get is digital distraction...
ban laptops?
A student's opinion: "At worst, I play a game of solitaire (something to do with my hands while listening...tantamount to doodling, which actually increases my attention span" ("me" on insidehighered.com)
"[The time I want students to pay attention] begins the moment I walk into the classroom and ends the moment I leave it. "Lids Down" down time is therefore all the time."
               - Taylor Stoermer on insidehighered.com

Lids down time?
you do have that power...
Social contract?
Wiki-based contract. 
Teach responsible use.
Student buy-in.
      (Diane Sieber, CU)
What do you want to do in your class?
In-class backchannel
Student/student collaboration
Student-teacher communication
Virtual class space
Your own professional learning
If you want your students to tweet you well, then you need to tweet them well
"If students are not using laptops to take notes..it is because faculty are not fully engaging them.  I think we can and should leverage our students' existing technology skills!"  
     - GradStudent on insidehighered.com
But that's not a service to the students
Like Twitter in conference
who's tweeting right now?
Smart use of social media tools matches what we know about how people learn
I prefer multitasking...
online class hub / home
All links @ http://bit.ly/9GJJrI
Give students clear guidelines
final thoughts...
blogging -> microblogging
twitter?  not so much
really?
Geek out on your own first
How people learn...
Learning is social
Metacognition is important
Interactive engagement 
improves learning
metacognition!
learning is social
reduce cognitive load
Motivation & relevance 
important
Jeff Werner, Flickr
photo:  Stanford EdTech 
on Flickr
blog.sciencegeekgirl.com     theactiveclass.com      @sciencegeekgirl
Luc Legay, Flickr
examples
http://digitalstorytelling.umwblogs.org/syllabus/

All links @ http://bit.ly/9GJJrI
Opportunity for social learning???
What we want them to learn
How do we manage digital distraction?
But which tools?
“I would much rather be texting a student usefully at 9:30 on a Saturday than playing catch-up in a purposeless office visit.”  
 - instructor

They use it a LOT
CU-Boulder Physics Department
Science Education Initiative