7/9/14: JAMES HUTTON AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA REVOLUTION

In a short period of time I have seen the ‘revolution’ of learning Geology with my own eyes…for geologists, James Hutton is considered the father of modern Geology and he was very ‘cutting edge’ during the 1700s. If I compare the tools I had when I was learning Geology (exams, lecture-types lessons, one book or two in the library everybody was ‘fighting’ for…) with the extra ones my students have today (Moddle sites, ebooks, Animoto videos, forums, online journals, online quizzes, Internet access, etc), well, it is a quite a jump. Having a Facebook account and/or tweeting about an event (did you feel that earthquake?, there is a tsunami warning, did you know?, etc) maintains people connected and informed which is after all what we want when we learn. All major Geology players (USGS, NOAA, NASA, FEMA, etc.) have a place to share their data and connect directly with your Facebook, Twitter, Google, email (used less and less every day). Our students already use most of these tools so it should be easy for teachers to integrate those in a classroom.

I tend to have a hybrid class using as many tools as I can trying to reach everybody’s styles and also making the learning experience fun and interactive. Yesterday we learned about elastic waves coming from earthquakes and how P (primary) and S (secondary) waves interact with materials and how we use them to learn about the layers of the Earth. Even in a class like mine (face to face) social media and internet/online tools are a great help for teachers. That doesn’t mean we forget about the ‘traditional’ ways, just maybe add here and there something different..

I just uploaded a USGS Twitter feed on my website so my students next week will get to gather real time information about earthquakes from it (if you are in my class this summer, you have been officially warned!). This is something I could have not been able to do last year because I did not know how and if you are going to use these tools in your class (*you should*) you need to learn them very well before presenting them to your students.

A Blog I use frequently is AGU's Blogosphere, where I get latest information on events (volcanoes, landslides, earthquakes). As I said in my last post, geological events can change really fast and Social Media is a perfect tool to keep up with what is happening around us. I am sure most of my colleagues would agree.

Let me know what you think-