As hundreds of millions of students around the world return to school this month they bring with them their iPhones, laptops, notebooks and fancy new cell phones. Some teachers may have a hard time considering whether those are toys or in fact the new tool on the frontier of reaching young maluable minds. The new challenge is the same as the old challenge- engagement. And everytime there’s a new technology, from Fischer Price Walky Talkies to the new iPhone 3G, sure enough students will be distracted by their awesomeness- until it blows up in their face in the case of the iPhone. Univerisites around north america have begun to see that the best way to engage young students is to adopt the mediums that they themselves have become accustomed to sharing information. When I was studying at Langara College in Vancouver I remember one of my final classes where we saw several videos- all on Youtube. And students were encouraged to use facebook to organize materials and communicate regarding group projects. Our project was called Operation Monarch, on the effects of deforestation in Mexico on Monarch butterfly populations. Not to be confused with Project Monarch- a supposed secret Nazi/CIA government Mind Control hypnosis conditioning program to create obedient slaves for teh secret Alien-Illuminati global shadow government. Or so these crazy paranoid folks claim. But let’s get back to reality.

At Queen’s University Film and Media program, students can download podcasts of film studies professor Sidney Eve Matrix’s lectures, if they miss class. However, she also has an 83% attendance rate in part because of the exciting ways in which the class environment engages students. Not every teacher is excited for social media in the classroom though. Wayne Cox, a political studies professor at Queen’s, said he thinks technology in the classroom can turn students into a passive audience. Matrix emphasizes however that social media engages students outside of the classroom, and takes the themes and topics out of the school environment exclusively and into their personal or social lives. For a full breakdown read this article in the Queen’s Journal. And bringing school out of the confines of the classroom and into student’s lives is really where a large part of the challenge lies. It used to be called HOMEWORK, but now it takes a matrix of social media to keep kids connected it seems.

Schools in the Dallas Ft-Worth Area are utilizing social media in this way to reach students and keep them engaged. According to the Dallas News three different school districts have begun to engage students through Twitter and Facebook. Teachers can post wikis and blogs to aid students and schools can post and tweet all information about upcomming games, events, or even test scores and immunization updates.  Even President Obama is reaching out to students through the internet. In his recent online speech directed to students he stresses the importance of responsible use of social media, and warns if they ever want to be president that they should watch what they post on Facebook.

Universities in Vancouver, UBC, SFU, Capilano, and the several colleges throughout the city and lower mainland have in some form or another felt the positive and negative effects of social media in the classroom. My experiences at Langara and SFU have been nothing but positive, so I’m a big fan of education continuing to adapt to new mediums and methods if it means better engagement. University Canada West, a small univesrity offering many online programs, recently announced the comprehensive launch of its social media strategy which includes its own Youtube station, and all other relative forms of social media. Seems schools and students everywhere are both re-learning how to teach and learn.