In recent years, there are many efforts to integrate social innovation at schools so students get exposed to it quite early. Social innovation is based on the following pillars:
- Exchange of ideas and values
- Shifts in roles and relationships
- Integration of private capital with public and philanthropic support
Ultimately, the most difficult and important problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without involving the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. To integrate social innovation in the classroom, there are certain technologies that can be integrated. New technologies can be used as trigger for discussion for students on social issues especially through discussion forums and platforms such as YouTube.
One good example of integration of new technologies for social innovation is Yellowdig, a discussion board tool within Canvas that has the look and feel of Facebook, is used to promote deeper discussions from students about links posted to the course site by their instructor or peers.
Gruber, Assistant Professor in the Medill IMC department and Courtesy Professor of Management & Organizations in the Kellogg School of Management, had previously used Twitter to engage his students in commenting on the “In the News” segment of his Strategic Communications course, in which he asks students to connect the things they are seeing in media outlets to the concepts they are learning in class. As he placed materials into Canvas for the class, Gruber saw how the materials he developed for use online could be repurposed for greater impact in the classroom, especially with undergraduates, who find Yellowdig a practical way to keep up with what’s happening in the real world and interact.
For younger students, another tool that could be proven useful is YouTube. YouTube is quite popular and widely used also among younger students. At the same time, it is easy to integrate in the classroom and also encourages exchange of information through its comments’ section.
The following are five reasons why you need to integrate YouTube especially in teaching social innovation:
- It is really easy to integrate.
Adding YouTube videos to your eLearning or face-to-face course is an easy task, due to the variety of authoring tools and learning management systems out there. You can use YouTube videos to introduce a topic, explain an online activity, motivate your learners, or simply extend the information conveyed by your course.
- It can be used to create a strong community.
As you have probably seen for yourself, everyone has a voice in YouTube. Using it as a social learning platform offers you the opportunity to build a strong community where everyone can comment, contribute, and share their opinions and ideas.
- It generates and promotes online discussion.
After viewing a YouTube video, students feel more confident to share their opinion on a given topic. At the same time, they can be encouraged to share similar videos with the class which will trigger discussion further.
- It encourages the development of note-taking skills.
In autonomous learning, one important part is for students to develop note-taking skills. It also demonstrates the students’ ability to grasp new concepts and also understand the most important points. At the same time, with YouTube, students have the opportunity to replay the YouTube video material until they grasp the key concepts.
- It allows for microlearning.
Using videos for microlearning ensures that complex procedures and demonstrations of specific skills are delivered in small quantities, which enhances knowledge retention. Furthermore, because YouTube is available on all devices and allows your learners to watch longer eLearning videos in short segments, your audience can watch the videos whenever they like and take their own time to absorb the information being offered.
Either teachers wish to create their own content on YouTube and similar platforms for their students or they wish to use material available online, YouTube and other similar tools seem to be valuable resources in microlearning, in creating a student community as well as discussing important social innovation issues.
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