Thai Education Finds A New World In Social Media

[webfact]

Education finds a new world in Social media

By Wannapa Khaopa,

Onravee Tangmesang

The Nation

While wary of its downside, teachers welcome closer student ties

Social media fulfils teaching. It helps teachers approach more students and creates more intimate relationships. Many educators are happy with such changes and recently shared with The Nation how it has influenced their teaching.

However, social media has both good and bad sides and teacherS warn internet users to use it properly and carefully; what they type and post can affect their real life and security.

Wellknown art guru Patravadi Mejudhon who is also the founder of Patravadi High School in Hua Hin and an English language teacher at the school, said she assigned students to hand in their daily diaries written in English to her via Facebook (Fb). "I can immediately send back the checked diaries. If they are online and have questions, they can ask me immediately, too."

"Fb also gets us closer. In the past, I just met and taught students in class, so only sometimes could I teach them life skills though I really wanted to. Now, I know many things about them, including their personalities, perspectives or even their personal problems," she said.

Renowned English language teacher and writer Andrew Biggs has also used both Fb and Twitter as new channels to educate Thais eager to learn English. He now has about 60,000 followers on Twitter and 5,000 friends on Fb.

"You have instant access to communication with people. It's very fast and very terse. I like that. That's my kind of writing. It's very timely. If I write a book, it takes a month to come out. But using social media, I write it right now and people know immediately. It's instant and you get reaction immediately," he said.

Kasetsart University (KU)'s Agricultural Faculty Assistant Dean Tanin Kongsila is really active. Not only does he use his personal Fb to advise his students on education and other problems, but also he takes care of the faculty's Fb to disseminate educational activities to students, teachers and personnel there.

"I'm online almost round the clock, making it available for students to consult," Tanin said. "Also, I've often posted the Lord Buddha's teachings on my Fb's wall to indirectly teach students morality. I'm happy that it received good feedback. Many of them later posted comments and discussions."

Mahidol University (MU)'s Faculty of Liberal Arts lecturer Chanokporn Puapattanakun uses social media to gather different instructional media, such as videos, articles and pictures for her students.

Jonas Sukgul, an MU student said he used Fb to collect opinions from friends on issues related to education. "I got many different useful opinions than I expected. Fb also makes us more intimate with each other and our lecturers"

KU's student Kirati Ausahawong, said social media could disseminate rapidly educational activities to almost all students at the Agricultural Faculty. KU has opened its M@xlearn system as a channel for lecturers to post lessons and assign homework and for students to search for lessons and hand in their homework.

To prevent problems risky in cyberspace, all warned internet users not to give out important personal information. They also warned that posting improper words could lead persons who post such words to problems in real life.

Benjarut Tapaintong, an educational service officer at MU, said she used to post unclear words that caused misunderstandings, and post some improper words without care, which led to her receiving bad feedback.

Worse problems have tzaken place overseas. The New York Post reported last month that three New York City teachers were accused of inappropriate words. One teacher left comments like, "This is sexy," under girls' pictures. All three had been fired. Abcnews.go.com reported that a teacher in Massachusetts was forced to resign after posting comments describing students as "germ bags" and parents as "snobby" and "arrogant" on Fb.

Andrew said: "Everybody has to be careful about giving out personal information. I have a responsibility that what I am teaching is not pornographic and not obscene."

Moreover, he expressed concern for young people in this social media era. He said TV was not a big thing now. Adults were more worried about young people's mobile phone use.

"Really, the whole world is connected on the mobile phone. This is the new television of the 21st century TV is a little bit old fashioned now," he said "You can get too deep into social networking to the point where you actually no longer social network with people on a onetoone basis, which is the most important social networking you can do. The internet is not really social."

"Your real social network is who you see, speak to and meet for lunch." Are you on Fb collecting lots of friends because you want to be loved? So, just find one person who loves you. You will discover that one person who loves you is more important than 5,000 names on Fb or 60,000 names on Twitter," said Andrew.

-- The Nation 2010-11-08

[DoctorG]

yawn

[anterian]

Internet social networking sites such as Facebook are a menace, people lack a sense of caution in their use.

[Seanextra]

<deleted>

[SomTumTiger]

Internet social networking sites such as Facebook are a menace, people lack a sense of caution in their use.

Hey! You darn kids get off of my lawn.

[supaprik]

Internet social networking sites such as Facebook are a menace, people lack a sense of caution in their use.

Hey! You darn kids get off of my lawn.

ha ha ha ha

[MikeyIdea]

yawn

Not for me actually, education is the most important problem Thailand has to tackle this century. Thailand can fight and win against corruption, "fair" elections not worth the name, the established elite, you name it. The middle class will still run away from the working class. The increasing gap between the poor and the middle class is unfortunately not going to be reduced only because the poor get access to better educaion either actually. For that to happen, the poor must also change how they teach their children before they start school even - to counter that working class kids are often solidly behing middle class kids even before they start school...

It'll take time...

Edited November 8, 2010 by MikeyIdea

[scorecard]

Ninety % of my Thai undergrad students spend hours on sms, facebook and similar sites. In fact in two classes I've banned mobile phones and notebook computers, because again and again I have discovered they are chatting /gossiping etc., on facebook, twitter, sms, etc.

I can already see the negative effects on face to face communications. Regularly some of my students cannot express themselves when required to answer questions, give a comment etc., and it's not lack of English language skills.

Edited November 9, 2010 by scorecard

[bitterbatter]

Facebook is very popular in the Thai education system. I have attended some classes here and half the students are on facebook during the whole class period.

[hammered]

The way we access information, exchange ideas and communicate is changing. This will have an inevitable impact on education whether educators like it or not. Change is coming. Teachers should think about how they can use this as part of learning in and out of classrooms.

The next few generations will be a lot different from my own generation. I generally though think that will be a good thing and try to avoid be a middle aged misery

[scorecard]

The way we access information, exchange ideas and communicate is changing. This will have an inevitable impact on education whether educators like it or not. Change is coming. Teachers should think about how they can use this as part of learning in and out of classrooms.

The next few generations will be a lot different from my own generation. I generally though think that will be a good thing and try to avoid be a middle aged misery

Sure, things change, change will always be part of life.

I agree, technology is valuable in many forms as teaching and learning aids, and as communication tools, and educators must be pragmatic about it's use (as aids - not as a replacement for teachers) and realistic in terms of how to package it so that students want to use the technology.

At my uni there are regular teachers room debates about how/when/where to use technology in the classroom. The opinions range from 'never' to even a couple of lecturers say 'replace teachers', and of course lots of opinions in-between.

Maybe six months ago our dean tasked a couple of lecturers to organize a 'seminar' about TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM. They eventually put together a half day 'seminar' including 4 X 20 minute on screen presentations from outside vendors (1 Thai company, 3 western based companies) showing their products.

Overall the 'seminar' had a few good points but it also generated a lot of negative discussion.

After each of the 20 minute presentations from the outside vendors there was a Q&A session with the vendor.

In every case the good questions about pedagogy totally stumped the vendors. In every case the lecturers who asked the questions had to give very lengthy explanations of their questions to the vendors, and it was obvious that all of the vendors had no knowledge whatever of these points.

Their failure to answer the questions simply led to silence with the vendors totally lost in terms of trying to 'sell' their products.

There were numerous comments from the audience such as 'why isn't (I'll call it 'Item 1' linkable to 'Item 2', etc., etc. In most cases the vendors suddenly realized the comment was quite logical and had been missed in their product.

One of the junior members of one presentation team tried to challenge the audience with comments like 'you just don't understand ...'. Not exactly a wise move to make such a challenge to a group of mostly middle aged Thai lecturers, and her boss had to quickly shut her up and apologize.

Back to the classroom - I'm aware of one faculty which is considering blocking mobile and wi-fi signals to classromms but ensuring that the lecturer has access by wire if needed.

Lecturers in my faculty have full permission to prohibit mobiles and notebooks from entering the classroom and some lecturers (both Thai and western) do in fact prohibit them.

I state at the start of the semester that mobiles must be turned off / totally off. Occasionally I confiscate a mobile and return it at the end of the class. One Thai lecturer states: must be totally turned off / first time caught - confiscated for that class / second time caught - confiscated for the remainder of the semester including both mobiles and notebooks, and the teacher concerned does regularly confiscate for the remainder of semester.

I guess it's actually early days in learning how to best use all of this and also early days in learning how to control it.

Edited November 9, 2010 by scorecard

[souvenirdeparis]

a teacher who gives students/pupils his /her email , or address, is asking for trouble.