Now What? (Education and Technology in a Post COVID World)

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the unfolding Twitterverse drama with bated breath. After mass firings, ban reversals, and a questionable choice in new ownership, everyone seems to be wondering if this is the end for society’s favorite birdie. The idea of a world without Twitter inevitably has me thinking about its impact on users and on the world at large…(*cough* recent presidencies *cough*).

Whether we’ve realized it or not, Twitter has affected the way we interact with each other, with celebrities, with leaders; it has changed the way we gather and disseminate news (remember when the death of Osama Bin Laden broke on Twitter before major news networks even knew about it?). The Twitterverse has reshaped how we live our lives and how we stay informed on everything from Presidential policies and musings to the latest memes about the Super Bowl and Academy Awards in real time.

But what will happen if that all goes away?

Greenhow and Gleason (2012) discuss Twitter itself in more academic terms as a “socio-technical space” (p. 465). The authors refer to the social media site as a “microblog” and record formal definitions of “followers,” “hashtags,” and “retweets”—a quaint reminder that these terms haven’t always been a part of humanity’s lexicon of slang. The authors go on to discuss the impact that Twitter was having even back in 2012 at the time of the article’s publication, using the example of the social upheaval of the Arab Spring to illustrate the power of grassroots efforts utilizing the site (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012, p. 466).

That’s exactly what a socio-technical space is: a place where people can gather in virtual-land to discuss ideas and share information…even create social movements and organize resistance. And what does this mean for education? Greenhow and Gleason (2012) explain that that question is one that bears significant consideration. This includes gathering Twitter into the fold of research under “new literacies” (p. 467).

Literacy, according to the authors, involves “a skill set related to the decoding and encoding of printed texts” (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012, p. 467). This also extends to the critical thinking skills needed to make informed decisions about the text one is consuming. But that’s not just limited to your grandparents’ world of hardcovers and paperbacks anymore. “Literacy practices are increasingly multimodal” (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012, p. 467). Nowadays, we navigate websites and links to related content in the same way that our forefathers learned to read from left to right with an ink quill in hand.

Additionally, multimodal texts “can be interactive as users can ‘write back,’ thus blending authorship, readership, production, and consumption (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012, p. 467).

Greenhow and Gleason (2012) go on to explore the idea of this ‘brave new world’ of literacy being ‘socially mediated’ (p. 468). Social media sites like Twitter have become a socio-technical gathering space where relationships are formed and maintained (or broken). During the recent pandemic, it became obvious just how much society learned to rely on social media for our very social existence!

Engagement is something we talk a lot about in education, particularly in research geared toward online education. Greenhow and Gleason’s (2012) review of literature suggests that “Twitter use in higher education may facilitate increased student engagement with course content and increased student-to-student or student-instructor interactions—potentially leading to stronger positive relationships that improve learning and to the design of richer experiential or authentic learning experiences” (p. 470). I love that quote. It encompasses many of the topics of research I am most invested in studying.

So, what happens when powerful socio-technical spaces like Twitter go bad…or even go away completely as some are now predicting? If history has taught us anything, it’s that technology will evolve and new uses for things will replace the old. Many of us can remember when MySpace dominated our time and attention. Before that, AOL chatrooms were all the rage.

My opinion? Humans will continue to invent spaces to share ideas and create new knowledge, whether it is in a physical classroom or via a virtual space like Twitter or Instagram. To further date myself, I leave you with a quote from a movie that explores the ever-steady march of technology and how humans use it: “Life finds a way.”

And while Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) was referring to the resurrection of ancient dinosaurs via preserved DNA, perhaps we, too, can learn lessons from that now-ancient film when it comes to ‘what’s next’ in technology and social media.

‘Til next time…

Greenhow, C., & Gleason, B. (2012). Twitteracy: Tweeting as a New Literacy practice. The Educational Forum, 76(4), 464-478.