Our Social History

If you are familiar with the late-night talk and news satire show Last Week Tonight hosted by comedian John Oliver you may have seen a bit titled “How is this still a thing” where he questions whether certain practices or ideas have outlived their usefulness, like Daylight Saving Time or celebrating Columbus Day. A similar query came to mind when I explored the social media emulator tool Fakebook: How did this become a thing?

Fakebook is exactly what it sounds like, a tool that lets you set up a fake Facebook profile, complete with personal information, posts and even friends. The intent of the site is made clear in that it allows teachers and students to create imaginary profile pages for study purposes, but why? Obviously, the existence of fakebook is predicated on the actual Facebook but it still begs the question as to why a study aid would be built on the basis of a social media platform. That we would have a tool to retell historical or even fictional events through a social media platforms says a lot about how we as a culture chronicle our history.

Ryan Taylor recently blogged about Allwyn Collinson’s six-year history project to recreate the events of World War II in real-time through Twitter. It’s a fascinating concept and one that has undoubtedly made knowledge of these events more widely known. A check of @RealTimeWWII’s Twitter profile boasts an impressive following with 515,000 followers.

Both of these examples seem to validate the concept that Marshall McLuhan put forth back in 1964 with his famous quote, “The medium is the message.”  The below video from the BBC Radio 4 gives a quick primer on the subject in under 2 minutes.  In his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan makes the argument that throughout history, what has been communicated is less important than how it has been communicated and that the technology used to transmit the message has had a transformative effect on society.

I think this idea that the medium is not something neutral, that it does something to people, is much more profound in the age of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. have made an undeniable impression on us and how we define our history. These are no longer individual histories but social ones. Through these social media lenses, my history is equal parts my own experience and your collective reaction to my experience. The instinct to record our history has always been there. Cavemen painted their stories on the walls. Today, our stories are written in the photos and status updates posted to our Facebook walls, and we invite others to participate in writing those stories.


McLuhan, M., & Lapham, L. H. (1994). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Reprint edition). Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

On The Question of Access

Week 4 is here almost gone and the buzzword of the week has been application and the instructional design for social media. As I’ve mentioned before in previous posts, the social media landscape is vast and the arrival of each new tool can seem a bit like a drop in the ocean. So how can we actually make use of these vast tools to promote and support learning?

There is an ever increasing body of research devoted to studying the use of social media to support learning such as this one that looked at what motivates students to use Facebook groups and the benefits they receive from doing so and this one that looked at Twitter as a means to increase student engagement. Both studies found evidence that supported the use of these tools in the classroom and they are hardly an exception. Many more studies are coming to similar conclusions about the benefit of these tools and it’s easy to see why.

It’s called social media and when applied to education it can make learning a more social experience. Rather than a one-way flow of information from the teacher to each student, social media tools can disrupt this flow and give students the opportunity to be creators and collaborators in the learning content. And because these technologies operate in real-time, they are excellent for reading and discussing about real world current events as they are happening.

But with all the hype that can accompany new technology tools, one of the things that gave me pause is the issue of accessibility. It turns out I wasn’t the only one that had this thought as Leah also blogged on the topic and I recommend you check it out if you can. But while her focus was on assistive technologies for people with disabilities, I was thinking even more basic to just access.

I came across this video a while ago about the “homework gap” and while the message is specifically aimed at the broader topic of internet access, the point it makes is very much applicable to this discussion about use of social media in education. According to the video:

"70% of teachers assign homework that requires access to the internet. Yet, 5 million families with school aged children do not have access to high speed internet service at home”

While the numbers keep getting better with each year, we have yet to arrive at universal high speed internet access for all students. And as the world becomes more technology-centric, digital literacy and fluency will becoming increasingly important for long-term success. When incorporating social media tools in the classroom to capitalize on any of the positive benefits they provide, we should remember to stop and consider the important issue of access as it relates to all of our students.