Mind the (Digital) Gap!

Abstract

The key focus of this paper revolves around the dual concepts of teachers acting as ‘digital intermediaries’ for students, pupils or marginalized persons and their ‘designing’ role in developing, maintaining and celebrating the creation of ideas, collaborative interactions and dissemination in the form of information as a sustainable commodity. The use of social (and digital) media becomes the ‘alternative’ collaborative tool that allows participants to engage in innovative learning environments, existing both inside and outside of the classroom. In using the platform of social media as a social innovation tool the project provided educators with the relevant knowledge, skills, values and capabilities required in facilitating a meaningful curriculum for the development of citizenship (in this case European) and sustainability in terms of a knowledge sharing community. The basis of this paper surrounds the intentions, implementations and outcomes of the EU-funded Comenius project ‘Learn to Teach by Social Web’ (L2T – www.learn2.teach.eu) which set out to exploit the educational potential that social media offers teachers in engaging their learners in the contextual development of skills and knowledge through an ‘alternative’ or unfamiliar learning paradigm. The project outcome is a self-study curriculum for teachers who would like to use social media in their classroom lectures.