Within this paper I have to tell the reason for conducting the research. I basically have to “sell” my reasoning for doing the research. It’s freaking social media! Enough said, right? Well, apparently not because that’s not the “way its done” in formal academic writing. Following is a very very very rough draft of my “significance of study” section. I’m interested to hear what you have to say about it, so here goes…btw, it’ll be the last post of the evening as tomorrow will be here soon and I’m ready to pull the pork out of the smoker and hit the sack! So here it is:
Significance of Study
Many schools of education rely heavily on the belief that education should be made relevant to students. Social media a one way to make be relevant in today’s culture. Society as a whole is moving, more and more, toward an electronic exchange of information. What possible motivation do students have to buy in to the need to get an education when it is using a system of information delivery, bound textbooks, that is based on technology dating back to the early Greeks? Education is being left behind by not adapting to current trends in culture and society. Social media is becoming more and more pervasive throughout society. Companies are implementing viral marketing campaigns through mediums such as Twitter and Facebook. New job descriptions are being written everyday, which involve marketing through social media. Information is exchanged freely without cost. Companies no longer rely on advertising firms to get their product in front of the consumer; they simply hire a social media consultant and take matters into their own hands. Why should education be any different? There is no reason to wait for the next textbook to come out when, through a collaboration of many classrooms, a current textbook could be written in wiki format. It could be changed to remain up to date. Why do teachers need to wait for the next how-to-teach book to come out when they can begin adding book writers to a network of social bookmarks and start synthesizing the exact same information the authors are reading?
The day of immediate access to information has arrived and it has come in the form of social media. Wikipedia is a great example of this. Celebrity pages on Wikipedia are updated before shows cataloging their ridiculous antics are even on commercial break. It seems there is a never-ending stream of editors willing to make this worldwide collaborative effort the be-all, end-all fountain of information. Social media tools like wikis are more accurate than print information because there is no waiting for a new edition to be printed.
Social Media is going to be revolution. Albert Einstein once said, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve been getting.” This is the trap of education. Many teachers are unwilling to change their method simply because they have always done it that way. That is not a good reason to keep teaching students the same way. In many ways, its similar to a farmer who plants his seeds by hand and harvests his wheat using a hand-swung scythe. Meanwhile, his neighbor is using a state-of-the-art tractor planting machine and an air-conditioned, satellite navigation equipped combine to harvest. The old-fashioned farmer is constantly wondering, “Why am I not being more productive like my neighbor?” Hopefully the education system, with some help from the inside, will realize we have been planting all of our seeds by hand while there is a state-of-the-art electronic planter sitting in our classroom waiting to be used.
