Reclaiming the students – coping with social media in 1:1 schools

Abstract

There is a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in education. Drawing on interviews and surveys with students and teachers in three Swedish schools, this study finds that students as well as teachers find much of the students' social media use distractive to learning. We investigate this by means of an interpretative study of students' and teachers' experiences. We find that concerns relate to how social media use makes students less social, how weaker students are more likely to get distracted, how teachers lack strategies for tackling the problem and how the responsibility of the use is delegated to the students. We discuss how the distractive use of social media is made possible as a result of education policies requiring a higher degree of individual work, individual responsibility, and educational choices for students. Teachers and school leaders need to jointly reclaim the students and coping strategies for the distractive use are urgently needed.

Keywords:

• 1:1 schools
• social media
• social networking sites
• distractive use
• school policies

Notes on contributors

Annika Andersson is Assistant Professor in Informatics at Örebro University, Sweden. Her research focuses on IT & Learning and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). The use of technologies in a learning context is her major expertise and at the moment she is involved in a large IT & Learning project (2010–2013) and will be analysing the effects of the 1:1-projects in Swedish schools.

Mathias Hatakka is a PhD student and lecturer in Informatics at Örebro University School of Business, Sweden. His research area is ICT-supported distance education focusing on evaluation and reuse of open educational resources in developing countries. Mathias has been involved in several development projects mainly in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He has also been working with UNESCO in evaluating their Open Training Platform.

Åke Grönlund is Professor in Informatics at Örebro University, Sweden. His research concerns the use of ICT in various human activities. The common denominator involved in all projects is to understand how people arrange their work, their organizations, and activities pertaining to private life, and how ICT can be used to make improvements.

Matilda Wiklund is Assistant Professor in Educational Science at Örebro University, Sweden. Her research interest concerns relations between educational issues and different media. This includes an interest in consequences of the use of digital media in educational settings. She is currently engaged in a three-year research project about 1:1-computers in Swedish schools.

Notes

1. Project website: http://unosuno.blogspot.se, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/UnosUno/231862316870862?ref=ts&fref=ts