Less than a month into her time as assistant professor at Michigan State University’s College of Education, Christine Greenhow has been sharing her research on social media, as pertaining to global education and policy, in high profile ways.

CQ Researcher, a weekly publication on trending issues, recently featured Greenhow in their issue on Digital Media, which discussed the controversy on whether technology has the capability to replace classroom teachers.

Greenhow recognizes that with today’s technology, traditional teaching styles won’t work if we’re keeping student success as our top priority. She commented that teachers can no longer look at their job as “pouring knowledge into the minds of students who are empty vessels” because with today’s technology, they’re not. Students have laptops, phones and other devices at their fingertips ready to answer their inquiries, so teaching perspectives should be aligned to the fact that, these days, students can find most answers on their own.

As for Greenhow’s reasoning for further investment in social media in regards to education, she says it gives students a “sense of being connected to a larger network and to the world.” In short, it provides a facet for real-world application of acquired knowledge, which encourages pupils to engage beyond the classroom. Said engagement has multiple pro’s, including bolstering academic achievement, and even civic engagement.

Say, for example, a student is assigned a research project addressing the very issue of increased social media utilization in school. The student could research classrooms already implementing social media and analyze their success, start a blog and/or other social media pages to inform and gather support and ultimately even use their own lobbying techniques to connect with legislators.

Greenhow will be sharing her ideas during the social media portion of discussion at the NSF Cyberlearning Research Summit in Washington, DC on January 18, 2012. The event is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and will investigate many ways in which education would benefit by being further integrated with technology.

All 32 speakers will be presenting in a brief and lively, TED-style format, and can be viewed via live webcast at the time of their speech.

Tags: CEPSE, Christine Greenhow, CQ, Cyber Learning, Digital Media, research, technology