Layering Technology into Educational Practice.
How can we use social media platforms and tools to enhance educational practice, while building connected SJSU communities?
We are engaged in this question in the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, in the Departments of Kinesiology and Justice Studies in particular.
And we are not alone.
Researchers, educators, students, administrators, politicians, parents, lobbyists, and opinion makers…and some guy I talked with at the local campus coffee shop…have filled digital space with petabytes of research and opinion on the topic.
The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus blog folks posted a list of their top technology articles for the year, giving us a tantalizing view into the types of education-technology news topics floating through the educational digi-space.
Here’s a sampling of interesting interwebz news bytes for the inquisitive types.
A sampling of content shows that two tribal academic camps are emerging. One is reminded of the show Lost: on the island are the techno-education enthusiasts who are in tension with education traditionalists weary of techno-promises and the digitization of the human educational experience. Many quiet educational avatars occupy the spaces in between the dominant nodes. Meaning, there are not enough voices adding texture and balance to the polar ends of the discussion.
Techno-media is ubiquitous. Whether you email, tumble, text, tweet, like, flip, pin, or comment…we are sharing information. Some inane, some insightful, some funny, some illuminating. We share. We can share better data, better information. Therein lays a beautiful circuit on the motherboard of social media tools: the power and importance of the online community is driven by the community’s creativity and connectivity. What better place to harness the creativity occurring in digital spaces than in higher-education communities?
We can use technology (in this case social media tools) to enhance university life (educational and social), if those social technologies are accessible, dynamic, integrative, flexible, scaleable, and sustainable.
We can use digital technologies in dialogue with traditional pedagogy – use technology as enhancements to our current brick and mortar systems. Ironically, we can use technology organically.
We are in the process of integrating social media platforms in CASA. To enhance the interactivity of this process, we will be writing a series of blog entries on our experiences in hopes of opening up larger dialogues, in SJSU digital space in particular, about technological integration with social media tools.
We’re interested in hearing from the campus community. Faculty, students, staff, and administrators. Contact us at KinesiologySJSU@gmail.com. Share your ideas, solutions, and apps with our technology communications group!
Join our online communities.
