How is social media changing the world? Is immediate access to information changing the way learners look at the world?

“Things get socially interesting when they get technologically boring”, very true, I really enjoyed Clay Shirky’s talk.

The fast changing social media lets us form groups effortlessly. It has changed our social world. Now we can work together on projects that we wouldn't have known about otherwise. We can find people with remarkably obscure interests matching our own. It has also changed our academic world, Society is moving toward a model of shared knowledge building, where people from all over the world can interact, question, reflect, and reshape thinking in meaningful ways.

At the same time, this change comes with its downsides. For instance, at the same time that it becomes easier for me to find blogs devoted to underlined meaning of a poem of an Iranian poet from hundred years ago, it becomes easier for some to find illegal or dangerous information, even the criminals don’t need to hide as they can make their own group easier with the new tools without going into hiding. We can encourage and guide our students to use social media while being socially responsible.

As for the educational side, information is available 24/7, but do we know how to sort them, to choose and analyze them wisely, and how to turn information to knowledge? We need to engage our student in an interactive learning environment that encourages them to participate and share their ideas, so that we can clarify and guide when needed.

At the end of his talk, Shirky asks: "How can we make the best use of this social media, even though it means changing the way we've always done it"? The points is, we cannot do what we've been doing when our students are not what they had been before. They are changed and we cannot ignore it. Using old tools to teach the new generation is like speaking in an ancient language that no one understands in a very boring way that no one enjoys!