Facebook: accidental learning and the learning potential of new Facebook groups
Last week I was taking a stroll through Facebook when number three son updated his status: ‘what is the Berlin crisis?’ Now, I nearly didn’t see this as it was sandwiched between umpteen Formspring comments, a couple of comments about ‘birds’ (he is fifteen and no ‘ornithologist’) and the regular abusive comments he and his friends seem to enjoy. Intrigued, I replied:
“most obvious would be the tension between the, then, USSR and America (well the West, but essentially the States) over Berlin, which ultimately led to the partition of the city through the construction of the Berlin wall.”
Turns out he is studying the Cold War as his final year history project before taking his GCSEs in the summer. What followed was a deep conversation, part in public on his wall involving some of his friends and part through direct messages, about this period of modern history, so real to me as I remember just how much the Cold War and acceleration of the nuclear capacity caused me anxiety when I was his age. We meandered through Berlin, Cuba and the Prague Spring and, as he had to set the Cold War in the context of current American foreign policy, discussed similarities between post WWII tensions between ‘East and West’ and the increase in tension between fundamental Christian doctrine and Islamic fundamentalism under the Bush administration. This went on for a good hour and involved lots of searching for good reference points to support the various arguments.
So what, you ask?
Well it brought it home to me once more how social media can drive both formal and informal learning. For my son it was a conversation he probably wouldn’t have had with his dad were he not sat at home trying to get some homework done and were I not at the Labour Party conference killing time in my hotel room. For me it was reflecting on a period of time long forgotten but also new learning as I trawled websites to make sure I had the facts right. But it would have been so much different had I not spotted ‘what is the Berlin crisis?’ in amongst a load of social media noise and clutter.
I met with Matthew Taylor (Chief Exec of the RSA) a few weeks back and, in a long conversation about professional bodies, membership bodies, activism, etc, we talked about the power of social media and its place in learning. I told him a similar story of my older son and a conversation I had with him on Facebook (its elsewhere on this blog). Matthew sad “ah, shouldn’t all courses have a Facebook group?” At that time it seemed impractical due to the open nature of Facebook and the ability for anyone to join pretty much any group they find. New Facebook groups might have just changed that.
With these new groups offering group creators greater control, closed communities but with the potential to share outward and the ability to download the entire content of the group, teachers and trainers have the opportunity to create community learning spaces in an environment that is cost neutral. I am not saying it is perfect, but new Facebook groups may, at long last, offer teachers and trainers the chance to harness the technology their learners use and own and also to add value to the social spaces their learners are active in. A shared learning space – closed but with the added ability for individuals to share out and the usually connectivity with Twitter and other social spaces.