In a post on his blog (link coming shortly), Leigh Blackall made a great suggestion for introducing people to social media that I want to contemplate here a bit.

He suggests that, rather than leap straight into course or curricular implementation of social media, instructors and staff should be encouraged to explore it within their own personal context first – whether this takes the form of research, professional development or something else.

I think this idea is really important to take on board, because it will help establish literacies and an awareness of the more significant aspects of social media – namely the networks, human dynamics, and the fluid, constantly evolving nature of the social media landscape, and its tendency to eliminate or alter contemporary social roles and relationships and replace them with something far more equalizing and democratic.

Otherwise, the absense of hands-on experience tends to see social media used in contrived, superficial ways – or worse still, compacted and distorted to suit traditional, more constrained models of learning and teaching in which the technology is seen and used as an after-thought or add-on rather than something meaningful.

Staff need to leave themselves the space to develop fluency in social media to the point where they are working and engaging through it and not just on it. That’s when the true values of the medium become most clearly apparent – and critically these lessons are arising through experience.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle