Social Media and Teaching – Education in the new media environment

New research in the Danish upper secondary schools shows that social media like Facebook is the number one attention diverts from the interaction about educational subjects in the classroom. At the same time international research shows that there is a great potential in using social media in the educational interaction. In this way there is a huge gap between the claimed learning potential and the negative effects that currently appears. This schism can be found in many educational institutions, but in this paper we will focus on Danish upper secondary schools, where we have done empirical research the past seven years (Paulsen & Tække 2009, 2010; Tække & Paulsen 2010). To find out if and how the gap can be reduced, we have initiated the action research project The Socio Media Education Experiment, and in the paper we explain both the background for the project and itspreliminary results. The overriding purpose of the paper is to provide a research-­based input to the discussion about the role of social media in schools.