Seek, filter and network
Ketan Deshmukh and Kathan Shukla
“I’m profoundly concerned about my child’s future. Facebook and YouTube eat up his entire academic time at home. I don’t see how we can impose usage restrictions since he is deeply attached to his virtual self. Please help. He was a brilliant student and has a lot of potential. Please do something” – begs Mrs. Shah, a concerned mother of a class 10 student.
How should an educator respond to this mother? Assuming that the educator wants to engage with this problem, there are primarily two approaches. The first one can be to devise a plan to reduce social media usage (especially, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) and supplementing that with other traditional learning activities so that academic time is not lost. This is likely to be a more popular approach and stems from the traditional belief that the usage of social media is a non-academic activity. Thus, to increase the time spent on academic activity, one needs to curtail the time spent on social media. In this article, we would like to challenge this belief. Are social media usage and academic learning mutually exclusive tasks? Or is it possible to use social media for academic learning? In answering these questions, we will explore a different approach to respond to Mrs. Shah’s concern. This second approach includes a proactive usage of social media by the school, teacher and students for learning. We argue that it is much more beneficial to embrace social media usage for student learning than to fight against it for this tech-savvy generation.
First, we must be clear about the direction in which the world is moving technologically and economically. You can pick up any journal or popular magazine covering topics like “Autonomous machines” and “Machine learning algorithms”, and can very well extrapolate the end of mundane, repetitive and unskilled labour intensive jobs. Autonomous driving without human intervention was accomplished in 2005 in the DARPA Grand challenge. IBM Watson proved it was possible for computers to understand human speech and provide appropriate responses when it won Jeopardy in 2011. Computers had already won against humans in chess (Deep Blue: 1997), we can now add Go, a game so complex that the number of possible moves in a single game exceeds the number of atoms in the universe (Google Deep Mind: 2016) and even Poker, a game requiring players to bluff and deal with imperfect information, (Libratus: 2017) to the list of games in which the machines outperformed the human mind. We can assume a surge in automation will creep into jobs that involve repetitive tasks. This means that in order to stay employed one will need to be re-skilled continuously and/or develop creative skills which are immune from automation. Thus, the most important skill that will be needed is, “knowing how to learn”, in other words, meta-cognitive skills. Once a person is self-sufficient in learning, all that s/he needs is access to content. This access is now at the fingertips for anyone with a browsing device and internet connection. But not all content on the Internet is desirable. Teachers can play a major role in enabling students to seek, filter, and establish the sources of knowledge and foster formation of their student’s personal learning network.
Forming knowledge networks is at the heart of Connectivisim: a learning theory for the digital age, proposed by Siemens (2004) and Downes (2006). Using the principles of Connectivism, Siemens (2004) makes a valid argument for this approach being the most suitable for training and educating people in a connected world. He states, “As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.”The approach maintains that “how you know” is more import than “what is known” (Downes, 2006; Siemens, 2004). In Connectivism, building a network of knowledge sources is more important than assessment of knowledge. The criteria to determine a knowledge network are apt for future professionals who need to be continuously learning. These criteria are diversity of knowledge sources, autonomy of participants, level of interactivity among network members, and finally openness of the network. The schools of the future will need to shape students to be able to build their own networks of knowledge sources.
How can schools and teachers encourage network formation?
- Schools and teachers will need to build a social media presence (e.g., Wikipage, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.) which is accessible to students and parents.
- These platforms should not only be used to disseminate knowledge about the school but also help to facilitate network formation among students with other sources of knowledge, e.g., blogs, twitters, webpages of eminent scientists and organizations by sharing and/or reposting from their own account.
- Encourage making connections to classroom content by promoting reflections and discussions on online posts in classroom sessions.
- Share procedures of signing up for daily newsletters of reputed societies and organizations. (E.g., India. gov, Science News, NASA, Nature, ISRO, Bombay Natural History Society etc.)
- Expose students to citizen science projects. An article by Dr.V Shubhalaxmi, ‘Connecting with nature’ (dt. Oct 2012) in this very magazine, illustrates how activities like exploring butterfly and moth habitats can be conducted using the expertise available from a Facebook group. Additionally, consider online platforms for citizen science projects viz. Zooniverse.org, Fold.it, and others.
How do we ensure that networks meet criteria of a knowledge network?
A knowledge network needs to fulfil the following criteria: Diversity, Autonomy, Interactivity and Openness. We will not be able to meet all criteria as we will need to maintain safety and boundaries for K-12 students. Thus, we can for now ignore the “openness” criterion because achieving it requires unrestricted public access which may be undesirable as we will elaborate later.
Diversity
- Ensure that diverse viewpoints are shared in the social group. Being able to tolerate opposing views is not only a social benefit but is a desirable trait for creativity. E.g., views on state sponsored healthcare, measures of human development, etc.
- All student activity on the platform needs to be self-driven. This involves granting reasonable freedom to act without any caveats for rewards or punishment. E.g., students to select knowledge sources to follow, share and signup to.
- Support students in collaboratively creating content to be posted on the network. E.g., writing a response to shared and discussed articles based on their own experiences and interpretations.
Autonomy
Interactivity
Let us take a simple chemistry demonstration done in high schools as an example. Suppose we wish to show the reactive nature of alkaline metals: sodium metal + water. Adding sodium to water results in an explosion, a fact known since the discovery of sodium. Why does this explosion happen? If students were exposed to a YouTube video of the reaction (Mason, P.E. [Thunderfoot] 2013, Jan 15) we can have a discussion of what the students think is the reason for the explosion? Traditionally, it was thought that releasing hydrogen gas from the reaction was causing the explosion. The slow motion video of the explosion clearly indicates that hydrogen lights up much after the immersed sodium explodes. We can encourage the students to find videos or articles that support their reasoning for the explosion. Students can be asked to come up with experiments which will help resolve the dispute. Support can be extended in conducting the experiments and allowing them to post their work and findings online as a response video. Thus, we can draw attention to different views of the same phenomenon incorporating the criterion of diversity. Allowing them to develop their own reasoning and finding supporting evidence ensures a sense of autonomy. Finally when students will experiment, analyze findings and share it in the network, we can help foster a deeper interaction.
Interestingly, the YouTube video and associated online interactions, as comments and response videos, led to a landmark discovery: that the explosion is due to the columbic interactions and can be controlled by manipulating the surface tension of water, published in Nature Chemistry
(Mason, P. E. et. al. 2015). This discovery will help us design and build efficient storage systems for alkaline metals. Imagine treating your students to this world of arguments, experimentations, analysis and counter arguments among researchers. More than the chemistry of reaction, physics of fluids, ionic interactions and slow motion camera and mathematics of frame rate and reaction times, it is the exposure to research and process of knowledge creation that needs to be highlighted.
Recommended measures to ensure safe environment
Social media is a powerful tool and mistakes can be severe. We may not be able to control all aspects of the virtual world but we can take steps to deal with the two most common problems that occur on such platforms: Loss of privacy and online bullying.
The school management, teachers, students and parents must be aware of the basic device and account security settings. Steps must be taken to ensure that all are aware of the recommended actions: strong passwords and their periodic changes, use of encryption, identifying unsecure sites, use of spam filters and ignoring unsolicited emails.
Finally, all social platforms allow one to set privacy limits from being visible to the public to only selected individuals. These practices need to be demonstrated to mitigate the possibilities of private information being visible to all. Use of restricted groups can help keep conversations within the safe confines of the school community. This is also why the network cannot meet the openness criteria.
Although the world on social platforms is virtual, the emotional impact of online interactions is very real. Students should be asked not only to identify instances of cyberbullying but also take appropriate actions (saving records and reporting) to deal with such instances. All need to be familiar with the use of the “block” or “ignore” options available on social platforms.
A social media cell can be set up with members from the management, teachers, students and parents. This cell must not only deal with providing necessary training and guidance but also act as a support forum to any member of the school community facing any issues in the virtual world.
Most students in this day and age are already on a multitude of social media platforms. Perhaps providing suitable guidance and support for social media usage can go a long way in preparing responsible and self-motivated learners, and virtual citizens. Most importantly, Mrs. Shah’s concern may no longer remain a concern if she finds that her son’s news feed is full of scholarly updates by eminent scientists from across the globe and he spends time interacting with other learners about the latest cool invention (or discovery).
References
- Downes, S. (2006). Learning networks and connective knowledge. Collective Intelligence and Elearning, 20, 1-26
- Downes, S. (2005, December 12). An introduction to connective knowledge. Retrieved on March 27, 2017, from http://www.downes.ca/cgibin/ page.cgi post=33034
- Mason, P. E., Uhlig, F., Vaněk, V., Buttersack, T., Bauerecker, S., & Jungwirth, P. (2015). Coulomb explosion during the early stages of the reaction of alkali metals with water. Nature chemistry, 7(3), 250-254
- Mason, P. E. [Thunderf00t]. (2013, Jan 15). Learning from Explosions! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=r6wp7IjOvDI
- Mason, P. E. [Thunderf00t]. (2015, Jan 29). High speed camera reveals why sodium explodes! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8
- Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. Retrieved on March 27, 2017, from http://www.itdl. org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm
Ketan Deshmukh is currently pursuing a Fellow Programme in Management in Innovation and Management in Education from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). He can be reached at ketand@iima.ac.in
Kathan Shukla is an Assistant Professor at the Ravi Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation at the IIM-A. He can be reached at kathan.shukla@gmail.com.