Book Review: Share and Be Social, but Think!

In Part 1 of this book review, I discussed the message and concepts within Tom Standage's Writing on the Wall: Social Media--The First 2,000 Years, a historical retelling of social media's evolution. Standage's research and historic-to-modern equivalencies of social media present many positive implications for the classroom. The whole premise that learning is social and collaborative and that knowledge is constructed is well-supported in educational research. Lev Vygotsky would applaud points about social brain theory in Chapter 1. Standage repeatedly emphasizes the importance of access information and the ability to freely make judgments about what is true and false. He is a clear proponent of a citizenry that acquires knowledge, uses information, and ethically decides right from wrong. Standage touches on the need for multiple literacies in citing examples of print, audio, and visual media systems--although not all are considered social media systems. I especially appreciated his nod to diverse learning needs and visual literacy, as he quotes Martin Luther's remark, "without images, we can neither think nor understand anything" (p. 58). In discussing collaboration and problem-solving within 17th century coffee houses, Standage reveals how Enlightenment scientists engaged in thinking routines about the natural world. Do these concepts sound familiar? It  is almost as if Standage were considering Portrait of a Graduate skills in the connections between information sharing and learning!

As an educator who is wary of integrating social media tools into her classroom, I appreciate Standage's equivalencies of analog, digital media, and social media across history. These equivalencies helped me to understand the power of certain tools, such as blogging. Standage peppers all chapters with references of "this is how (insert historic media here) is similar to (insert modern social media here)." A few examples:

Sources: Wikipedia & Twitter

• 16th century Tudor England miscellanies (notebooks) were "like Internet users setting up blogs or social-media profiles...[for] posting links and snippets found elsewhere" (p. 74).
• The interaction between published newspapers and letters "enabled the community to talk to itself," such as on blogs (p. 128).
• Centralized broadcast media, which was/is hungry for advertising revenues and consumers, represents the opposite of social media (Chapter 10).

When making choices about what social media tools to use in our classrooms, teachers must keep in mind Standage's point about the power of active community participation between creator and consumer. Learning is social and collaborative and knowledge is constructed. The opportunity for dialogue between an author and an audience is crucial to synthesize new ideas or revision of old ideas. Inert knowledge is nowhere near as powerful as the power of peers in shaping our understanding of the world through shared meaning-making.

One downside of Standage's argument is that he is pro-consumption of information without addressing how to filter that information. Standage does address how authority figures--kings, censors, scientific societies--would filter information for consumers by controlling what information would be printed, but what happens once the information is shared in a social media network? What skills are necessary in order to maintain a healthy information diet? How can we empower out students to consider the reliability of information? This is obviously a perfect opportunity for teachers to integrate information using skills into their curriculum; students need to know how to filter the information that they are seeing inside school and on TikTok. This is one critical thinking skill that cannot be forgotten when educating 21st century learners.

Purchase Writing on the Wall on Amazon