Is social networking really the right tool for 21st century education?

[Anne Bonnar]

from LSE's Flickr commons stream

Great gurus of the internet age, such as Henry Jenkins, have challenged educational institutions to change their ways to engage in today's participatory culture. The latest academic challenge is in the Journal of Music Research Online where Paul Anthony Draper, examines a number of music practices in light of their impact upon economies, education and music-making in the 21st century.


‘From MySpace to YouTube, Flickr and Last.FM, an online participatory culture is transforming value systems and creating new pathways for autonomous innovation. In the web 2.0 phenomenon, social networks continue to define the information society and in turn, redefine artistic career opportunities quite different from traditional training preconceptions of a former era. Yet in music, although the romanticised 70s styled, star-driven model is in the process of significant transformation, classroom practice reveals that many students maintain outmoded ideas of just what career musicians do and how they make a living.

University-based music faculties rightly argue to be places of higher learning: art for art’s sake, not necessarily connected to commercial outcomes, but rather, to promote creativity and excellence in craft. Still, neither can music educators afford to ignore the fact that many students desire vocational success and to be able to work rewardingly as professional artists.’

How on-line social networks are redefining knowledge, power, cultur...


Now all of you 38 minuters involved in art, design, communication and digital media will have spent years already using blogs and the like as part of your learning and assessment. Are these academic arguments preaching to the converted?

And is this not a simple divide between creative subjects and the professions of law, accountancy and medicine? Surely we have to draw the line somewhere. We want our surgeons to have learned the old fashioned way, dont we?