Green Team Response: Facebook in Classroom

I remembered the Green Team group’s discussing social network such as twitter and facebook. Facebook’s popularity is uncontested but questions remain as to its role and purpose in an educational setting.

Yes, we know that facebook is Social but according to research it increases a sense of belongingness; build bonds between classmates; and increase bond between students and instructors.

The key debaters are:
CON

“I have seen it [technology] used as a delivery system, then as content in the classroom and finally as a classroom, building and campus itself, and in every case pedagogy changed to accommodate the interface. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Unless we impose that logic on social networks, they will align educational methods with corporate motives…”

PRO –

“Social networking has arrived in hundreds of thousands of classrooms and is attempting to show that technology in education is less about anonymous chips and bytes filling up our children with knowledge, less about teachers reinforcing a ‘chalk and talk’ style with an interactive whiteboard, and less about death by PowerPoint bullets. It’s more about helping learners become more world-aware, more communicative, learning from each other and understanding first-hand what makes the world go round.”

I thought there project was very informative and it’s a thought when I start teaching.

Technology in Arts Classroom

It may seem an irony to some, but technology is playing a significant role in ensuring that the arts are a core subject area in the K-12 curriculum. Interactive networking technologies are providing students and teachers with greater opportunities to experience firsthand the visual images, sound, and motion that embody the arts--as well as to discover the interdisciplinary and multicultural dimensions of arts education. This natural synergy between the arts and technology in education is helping artists, arts educators, and generalists to shape a new grassroots vision and knowledge base for arts education that we believe has three key components.

First, it is clear that arts education must evolve rapidly as a community of interest that nurtures itself through purposeful and dynamic interaction among its members, similar to the high level of Internet-based sharing of ideas and examples among students, teachers, and professionals that has existed in science and math education.

Second, technology-based tools will enable teachers and students to have greater access to arts-based materials and resources. Students and teachers will no longer be limited to 45-minute art and music classes and infrequent (if at all) field trips to galleries or performance halls. The Internet and new multimedia applications will provide opportunities to experience the full range of visual and performance content in real time and to access them in multimedia databases.

Third, arts education in the future will be affected by technological applications that offer new means for creating art, whether visual or performance-based. Networking technologies are providing students with tools and facilities to extend hands-on experiences beyond the traditional classroom or studio.

The good news is that there is a rapidly growing networked community of artists, arts educators, and general educators who have embraced technology as an exciting vehicle for introducing young people to the visual and performing arts.