The Electronic Age in the Classroom

The classroom has vastly changed in the course of the past century: educational tools have gone from the personal chalkboard to personal computers for each student. With the dawn of the electronic age came the metamorphosis of educational resources from books, to online learning (d2l) and social networking sites such as twitter, facebook, myspace, and delicious, to name a few. The issue is whether or not these new social networks should be incorporated into the classroom.

In the past year, I have heard of numerous accounts of potential employers and faculty of universities refusing to hire my generation due to negative or undesirable information on facebook or myspace accounts. While I am careful in what I post on these networks, I am disturbed by the thought that a minor flaw in one’s profile or an unwise comment posted by a friend might affect one’s future career. This ready accessibility to one’s personal life has never been so easy for an employer or teacher to obtain, why should it be used against this generation? Following this train of thought, I am averse to teachers making social media networks a mandatory requirement for students, especially young high school students. While students are young, it is their parent’s duty to monitor how and why their children use the internet. I have met numerous parents who are concerned about the amount of information that can be found out about their children can be found out through media portals such as myspace.

             This doesn’t mean that I take a fatalistic stance on social media, in fact, I love to keep in touch with friends and post my opinions and thoughts online to a wider array of people the world over. Social networks allow for long distant communication and sharing of ideas (and ideals) with people of varying backgrounds and geographical locales. I believe the internet is a great tool that can greatly help the learning process, I just would prefer if certain media networks (such as facebook) be optional in class, while academic networks be required if the teacher wishes to exchange information electronically.