Interesting take on Social Media in Education..
From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments | Academic Commons
My own experiments in
this regard led to the creation the World Simulation, now the
centerpiece of my Introduction to Cultural
Anthropology course at Kansas State University. As the name implies,
the world simulation is an activity in which we try to simulate the
world. Of course, in order to simulate the world, we need to know
everything we can about it. So while the course is set up much like
a typical cultural anthropology course, moving through the same
readings and topics, all of these learnings are ultimately focused
around one big question, “How does the world work?”
Students
are co-creators of every aspect of the simulation, and are asked to
harness and leverage the new media environment to find information,
theories, and tools we can use to answer our big question. Each
student has a specific role and expertise to develop. A world map is
superimposed on the class and each student is asked to become an
expert on a specific aspect of the region in which they find
themselves. Using this knowledge, they work in 15-20 small groups to
create realistic cultures, step-by-step, as we go through each
aspect of culture in class. This allows them to apply the knowledge
they learn in the course and to recognize the ways different aspects
of culture–economic, social, political, and religious
practices and institutions–are integrated in a cultural
system.