Why Should We Embrace Social Media?

Why Should We Embrace Social Media?
(Source: Why Educators Should Become Hackers)

1. The old school conceptualization of the classroom as a place to receive knowledge has outlived its usefulness. Society in general, and today's college students specifically, are more interested in participatory methodologies.
2. Most of today's college students have never known a time without the communications technologies that are blended into their lifestyles.

Ask any pilot and they will tell you, that it is surprising how well humans can adapt to situations where we need to divide our attention between various tasks. There's an old pilot saying that "driving a car is like sleeping compared to flying." 

It's no surprise that pilots have lower car insurance rates (because of a lower probability of getting into an auto accident) than the population at large. I would venture to guess that pilots have less car accidents is because they have developed skills and habits to help them manage their attention and concentration in a
demanding environment and that driving  a car does not require anywhere near the same demands.

Now, imaging your students processing information like pilots - in a typical day they are connecting, consuming, and creating in the digital space paying attention to many things at once. Then, they walk into the college classroom where things move a lot slower and engagement demands are low (possibly near 0). While I don't expect faculty to be "entertainers", I do presume that we'd capture more student attention, interest, and insight if we engaged our students at a higher level than we do in the traditional classroom.