Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55943
FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY Business Professor R Social Media and the by Allen H. Kupetz esearcher and scientist Roy Amara once said, "We invariably overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies, while underestimating their long-term effects." That statement, now known as Amara's Law, could have been written specifically about academia's attitudes toward social media. Many professors are talking about Facebook and Twitter, but few really know what long-term impact they might have on the classroom. Much of academia is still living in the world of Web 1.0, where a few content creators talked to the many. Web 1.0 resembled the way a professor lectures to a class. But the emergence of Web 2.0, where everyone can share with everyone, has changed the equation. Web 2.0 encourages individuals to contribute their own voices to Using social media in the classroom might not be as hard as you think—and it could be more powerful than you realize the conversation. It's driven by social media, a broad term that encompasses a suite of technologies that enable online activities such as social networking on Facebook or LinkedIn, sharing pho- tos and video on sites like Flickr and YouTube, writing blogs, or creating wikis. The 20-somethings coming into business classrooms today have been using social media applications for most of their lives. And as a 40-something professor, I know I can reach these stu- dents more effectively if I use the same tools in my teaching. 44 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010