Social Media : creating personalized and differentiated learning opportunities

As the dawn of a new curriculum is upon us, many teachers can’t help but feel concerned/intimidated by the emphasis that the new BC Ed. plan is placing on personalized learning. Admittedly, I for one feel a little hesitant towards this new approach, but not because I don’t believe in its merits. The main issue with this new direction is logistics. The current system does not support the individualized attention needed in order to give students a personalized learning experience. When faced with class sizes pushing 30, it’s no wonder why many teachers are still skeptics.

So what can we do about this? How are we going to adapt and make this idea a reality? Adapt being the key word here. The answer may be at our fingertips … literally. In this modern day, teachers have some of the most sophisticated educational resources at their disposal; I’m talking about social media and mobile learning. Although its critics may be numerous, this “informal” strategy may be just the right one to get the job done.   

There has often been a divide between what’s considered “formal learning”, found in highly structured and recognized educational institutions, and informal learning, which is a product of daily work, family relationships, and leisure activities. Because informal settings often provide highly contextualized learning environments, we generally gain and retain more knowledge here than from formal environments (Gikas, 19). Surprise!  This sentiment is echoed by Traxler, author of many pieces on mobile learning:

[W]ith mobile learning, content can be more context aware, authentic, and situated in the surroundings where the learning is more meaningful to the learner. Learners can personalize the way they interact with the course content. They can also customize “the transfer and access of information in order to build on their skills and knowledge to meet their own educational goals” (Gikas, 19).  

So, coming back to my original question: how can we, as teachers, ensure that each student receives the personalized learning experience that they are due, without spreading ourselves too thin? One way, is to blend the structured formalized learning that takes place in the classroom with informal contextualized learning that can be facilitated through the implementation of social media resources. Social media tools afford students the ability to interact and collaborate with one another and their instructors. As a result, students are able to personally connect with their learning through this mass collaboration and interaction. According to Greenhow, this inherently creates a student-centered framework which “promotes personal choice, customization and student familiarity”, allowing students to form their own individualized understandings of course content (Gikas, 19). Furthermore, social media, besides already being a source of engagement, also provides students with continuous connectivity and a mobile and authentic learning environment.

In short, social media is here to stay. The traditional wood and brick classroom is making way for the new global classroom; learning need not be constricted to a building or an institution. Rather, it is continuous and organic, things which are complemented by the connectivity, mobility, and collaborative ability of social media. As this new era of education approaches, we should not be feeling solely responsible for individualizing the learning of each of our students, but rather, we should be providing them choice and the tools to do it themselves.