I am excited to share a new article (Akgun & Greenhow) published in AI Ethics which resulted from Selin Akgun’s @SelinAkgun9 work in CEP 956 course: Mind, Media and Learning  @MSU_EPET @MSUCollegeofEd. Check out the open access article and abstract to rethink ethical and societal implications of AI in education!

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field of study that combines the applications of machine learning, algorithm productions, and natural language processing. Applications of AI transform the tools of education. AI has a variety of educational applications, such as personalized learning platforms to promote students’ learning, automated assessment systems to aid teachers, and facial recognition systems to generate insights about learners’ behaviors. Despite the potential benefits of AI to support students’ learning experiences and teachers’ practices, the ethical and societal drawbacks of these systems are rarely fully considered in K-12 educational contexts. The ethical challenges of AI in education must be identified and introduced to teachers and students. To address these issues, this paper (1) briefly defines AI through the concepts of machine learning and algorithms; (2) introduces applications of AI in educational settings and benefits of AI systems to support students’ learning processes; (3) describes ethical challenges and dilemmas of using AI in education; and (4) addresses the teaching and understanding of AI by providing recommended instructional resources from two providers—i.e., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab and Code.org. The article aims to help practitioners reap the benefits and navigate ethical challenges of integrating AI in K-12 classrooms, while also introducing instructional resources that teachers can use to advance K-12 students’ understanding of AI and ethics.

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Social media use has spiked around the world during the COVID-19 global pandemic as people reach out for news, information, social connections, and support in their daily lives. Past work on professional learning networks (PLNs) has shown that teachers also use social media to find supports for their teaching and ongoing professional development. This paper offers quantitative analysis of over a half million Twitter #Edchat tweets as well as qualitative content analysis of teachers’ question tweets (n = 1054) and teacher interviews (n = 4). These data and analyses provide evidence of the kinds of supports that teachers in the United States and Canada sought on social media during the rapid transition to emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020 and how these supports informed teaching practices. These results provide insights into PLN theory and teachers’ social media use during times of disruption and crisis. Open access article here: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13097

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New research! Inquiring tweets want to know: #Edchat supports for #RemoteTeaching during COVID‐19 https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.13097#.YVnI5xnr3gk.twitter

Citation:
Greenhow, C., Staudt Willet, K.B. & Galvin, S. (2021). Inquiring tweets want to know: #Edchat supports for #remoteteaching during COVID-19. British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13097

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Social media platforms can play an important role for teaching students. Check out the first comprehensive review (open access) of over 13 years of research on teaching and teacher learning with social media in K-12 education. This review from Michigan State University (@MSUCollegeofEd) researchers and published in Teachers College Record (@tcrecord) can help teachers and instructors think through and execute research-informed practices with social media to enhance traditional in-person or online learning.

This research synthesis found that using social media, students engaged in active learning, self-directed learning, and critical thinking; created deeper interactions between teachers and students (which is so important when classes move online); and expanded learning communities beyond school walls. It’s not surprising since students use social media in almost every other aspect of their lives.

“Due to lack of research synthesis in this field, educators and teachers have had very little guidance on research-informed practices,” Greenhow said. “This has been a problem since a quarter of U.S. teachers surveyed turned to social media to interact with students when the pandemic began and were rapidly required to teach online. This synthesis of will help educational professionals understand how their social media use can help students and support their own rapid learning ­— during the pandemic and beyond.”

The research also showed that through social media, teachers can enhance interactions between students, between students and teachers, and with people and resources outside the classroom. All are important for a student’s sense of belonging in an educational community.

And by using social media themselves, teachers can receive professional benefits through just-in-time teaching-related resources and social or emotional support outside their own school or district, she said.

Greenhow said the research provides an understanding of the impact social media has on teaching and learning, which will help teachers prepare for a combination of in-classroom and online learning likely expected this fall.

“Faced with uncertainty about what form their fall teaching will take, these insights on the advantages of using social media will help teachers address common teaching challenges,” Greenhow said. “The constant challenges of promoting students’ active learning and sense of connection are issues that educators often struggle with, but especially so when they have to turn on a dime to recreate in-person classes online.”

Greenhow’s co-authors are Sarah Galvin and Emilia Askari with MSU and Diana Brandon of Florida State University.

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As new technologies shape and are shaped by human practices, educators and researchers must consider the impact that participating in social media—to access, reflect upon, question, evaluate and disseminate scholarship—is having on their professional development and practices. This paper investigates how members of the educational research community use social media to advance professional learning and scholarship dissemination in online–offline networks. Specifically, we examine whether and how participating in the microblogging service, Twitter, as a conference backchannel, facilitated professional learning and participation in the annual meetings of American educational researchers in 2012 and 2016, respectively, and the nature of that participation. Insights from this paper will benefit educators of varying disciplines and experience levels interested in the changing nature of social media in education, scholarship, and professional learning ecologies.

Citation: Greenhow, C., Li, J. & Mai, M. (2019). Social scholars: Learning through tweeting in the academic conference backchannel. British Journal of Educational Technology. DOI: 10.1111/bjet.12817

(Direct link here: https://rdcu.be/bCT5J)

Sample Tweet: From tweeting to meeting: Expansive professional learning and the academic conference backchannel by @chrisgreenhow @jiahang_li @minhtuyen – British Journal of Educational Technology – Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12817#.XOAnotAys9k.twitter

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Chris (@chrisgreenhow)
Jiahang (@jiahang_li)
Minh (@minhtuyen)

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Are you interested in learning, teaching and policy issues related to social media in education? If so, we invite you to participate via a streaming zoom session in #Cloud2Class: Exploring the Disruption and Reorganization of Educational Resources in the Age of Social Media Conference, which will be held at Michigan State University on October 29-30, 2018. Our goal for this event is to bring together a group of regional, national and international thought leaders to brainstorm the future direction of education in the age of social media and facilitate collaboration and an exchange of ideas among a diverse group of leaders.  We hope can attend some or all of this exciting event remotely! All you need to do is RSVP here.   Tweet with the hashtag: #cloud2class

Conference overview. Today, one-third of the world’s population use social media to find other people and resources for real-time information and connection across geographical, cultural and economic borders. In this growing social media space educational researchers, policymakers, administrators, teachers and others must better understand how to leverage online communities, communication, and collaboration. Those engaged in the work of education must bridge cloud to class, developing “network literacy” across physical schoolhouse boundaries, advancing professional knowledge, and distributing quality instructional resources within changing organizational contexts. This conference convenes an international, interdisciplinary group of influential researchers, policymakers and practitioners to create a research agenda in five key areas toward advancing understanding of the educational activities happening within and around social media, their connection to classroom and school practices, and their impact on teaching, learning, and school improvement efforts and policies.

We anticipate many positive outcomes from this event, including two special issues in premier journals: American Journal of Education and Teachers College Record.  This will consist of a collection of published articles and critical commentaries from various participants/stakeholders that are disseminated through traditional and new channels, including a social media campaign, #Cloud2Class.

Additionally, we hope that the conference will provide participants with the opportunity to form new partnerships and collaborate on a variety of projects.

The #Cloud2Class Conference schedule and information for remote participation is available on the conference website (www.2018miniconference.wordpress.com).

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During the February 2018 All-University Awards, Associate Professor Christine Greenhow was recognized with a Teacher-Scholar Award by Michigan State University.

Greenhow is one of six faculty selected through a university-wide competition. The annual honor celebrates faculty early in their careers who have demonstrated excellence in scholarship and teaching, with effective teaching approaches closely linked to and informed by their research. Greenhow is the 26th person in the College of Education and the 10th faculty member in her department to win this award in its 33-year history. The award is supported by the Office of University Development.

Read more here. 

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