How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education

The appearance of collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media, and video games has altered the way individuals and organizations relate to one another. There is no longer any need to wait on professionals to share material and report on new developments. Today, people communicate directly in an unmediated and unfiltered manner. These developments have lowered information costs and altered the dynamics of information dissemination. On some platforms, communications costs have dropped virtually to zero. No longer are communications one way or based on organizational hierarchies. Rather, organizational expression moves in many directions at once and interacts with a wide range of personnel involved in the process.

The emergence of new platforms has been particularly dramatic in classroom transmissions. As Stanford University communications professor Howard Rheingold notes, “Up until now, ‘technology’ has been an authority delivering the lecture which [students] memorized. If there is discussion, it’s mostly about performing for the teacher. Is it possible to make that more of a peer-to-peer activity? Blogs and forums and wikis enable that. So a lot of this is not new, but it’s easier to do [and] the barriers to participation are lower now.