Today we also study and learn within a social platform. It is the new frontier of learning, more and more widespread not only among children. How to find this content? It’s very simple! You have to enter TikTok, Instagram or YouTube and search for hashtags (#) such as #learning, #learning #learning, #learning, maybe adding what, such as English, grammar, math etc …, or typing the hashtag directly of the subject you want to learn. Many people will be amazed to find at their disposal, within the digital platform, professionals, professors, doctors, experts and at the same time many young people, even adolescents with a particular aptitude towards a specific subject, who help followers to study, to understand , to love what they teach.
In 2016 I wrote Hashtag Generation, and I was not wrong, we are the generation of tutorials, we learn through videos that teach us how to do or not do a certain thing, even how to go to the bathroom. The most consulted video tutorials (video games have a separate channel) are cooking, travel, how to become rich and happy. Today the contents related to fit and healthy eating are also teeming.
Those linked to diction and the Italian language are also increasing more and more. Who among you hasn’t hated grammar at least once in your life? Who among you hasn’t had doubts about how to write a word or conjugate a verb? How many think they can’t learn grammar since they didn’t do it in school? How many kids don’t love it because so many times it is taught in a heavy and suffocating way? Today you can even learn grammar, chemistry, mathematics or physics, the slightly more difficult subjects thanks to the many professionals, amateurs and experts who have made their knowledge available to everyone to make it clear that it is also possible to learn. with a smile, even without taking very heavy and boring lessons. You can also learn in a dynamic, fast way, even on a social network like TikTok or Instagram, because today not only information, but also training is within everyone’s reach.
What is the secret of the success of social learning? I asked Manolo Trinci, author of “The very basics of grammar” published by Bompiani who, with a TikTok and Instagram channel dedicated to social grammar teaching, is particularly popular with children and adults (myself included). Manolo began to exploit social channels using images, creating cartoons able to explain grammar through another language than the scholastic one, that of the youngest, above all to try, successfully, to make him love the much hated grammar. The basic approach to grammar is wrong. His study is experienced with the prejudice of scholastic assessment, while it is possible to learn it without undergoing it, simply by feeling an active part of the learning process. It is important to simplify the contents without falling into trivialization, without using too many technicalities or terms that linguists use purely, using a communication method that is understandable to all to capture and keep the attention high. It is precisely the use of everyday, real-life examples that creates greater involvement and curiosity, explains Manolo Trinci, as well as the weekly challenge on Monday that makes them much more involved without feeling valued. This mode is experienced as an opportunity to get involved. There are many comments he receives every day, especially words of thanks for giving him the opportunity to make peace with grammar and to feel more confident in writing because the written language is still alive.
I believe that Manolo Trinci’s success is also dictated by his spontaneity; he is not seen by his followers as a professor who stands behind a chair, he does not create an emotional distance and does not convey a feeling of unreachability. He uses simple language, which reaches everyone, constantly changes stimuli by activating curiosity, interacts with his audience by creating contact and therefore trust, also answering their doubts. Finally he plays with his followers, challenges them, takes quizzes and people, sometimes without even realizing it, learn while having fun. This does not mean that frontal lessons and more traditional teaching based on books should be abolished, I must specify it for those who think by polarizing what they read and taking everything to extremes; it means that it is certainly a channel that works, because the numbers speak for themselves. I myself, in parallel with reading and writing books and articles, study with social media and audio books, because this form of learning stimulates my brain more and the learning rate, provided that it can be calculated.
Social learning is effective because it activates the brain, curiosity, because it is a more direct way, because a more “understandable” language is used, because one feels less ignorant and less valued and therefore the negative emotional component obfuscates less the cognitive one. The younger generation is used to learning through the network, also through video channels and with visual and auditory stimuli that create an amplification of the stimulus.
Training apps are also growing sharply, especially those relating to foreign languages. But be careful! Children still need to read, to also activate other brain areas, not to always maintain excessively rapid and fast rhythms, but to know how to stay even in the pause and in a condition in which one is not overstimulated to prevent them from going to affect further the difficulties of prolonged consultation and attention.
In the United States they are planning “walking classrooms”, based on lessons practiced outdoors through podcasts to be listened to in their headphones while moving. The Walking Classroom is an educational program that offers students the opportunity to do physical activity without wasting teaching time and applies Kuczala’s kinesthetic learning theory. All this is very interesting, but we must never lose the sense of learning together, of the group-class, of comparison, competition and team play to avoid having a generation of cognitively gifted and deficient children. the emotional and relational one that will increasingly tend towards social withdrawal. For this reason, this modality cannot take precedence over the more traditional one. We cannot foster technological isolation even more: we must use these modalities as an addition, as a facilitator, as an aid and not a substitute.
The brain responds well to these signals, especially that of the new generations immersed in technology, that of the little ones. The smaller they are, the better they respond, their brains are already shaped on digital stimuli.
The results of a recent study entitled “The Walking Classroom: Measuring the Impact of Physical Activity on Student Cognitive Performance and Mood”, published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, demonstrate significantly higher levels of learning while walking than when walking. seated learning and support the thesis that the association of physical activity with education leads to an increase in performance and mood for elementary school students.
Today the use of video games is also being introduced as a formative and educational support in the classroom which allows, on the one hand, to increase the development of skills and digital intelligence, and on the other, to involve children more in the process of learning. The “gamification” applied to training allows you to live the process from within in an active and direct way and therefore to fix it more in the mind. Last year, with the National Adolescent Observatory team we worked with over 1600 children aged 9 and 10 and created a game to teach them what grooming is and how not to get stuck in these dangers of the web. All the children appreciated this mode very much because they were involved, called to solve tasks and accept challenges to then reach a goal. In the final check, all the children had a clear idea of what grooming was and all the information that had been communicated and taught. Using the game greatly facilitated the learning process and fixed the proposed content in their mind.
We must certainly be careful not to overload them with stimuli, given that today we are all bombarded with all kinds of information and our attention capacity is really put to the test. For many children and young people, in fact, “classic” reading has become increasingly difficult, as well as maintaining concentration on stimuli that are not digital. Even the books themselves are adapting to this change: they are increasingly based on images, rules, clichés and recall the social style. The digital language is simpler and more immediate, while the non-techno-mediated one is more complex, requires more effort and more time, so the level of attention and involvement drops drastically. What attracts social learning, moreover, is the immediate gratification: I have the answers immediately, I have an instant reaction and this also activates the areas of the brain related to the release of dopamine, reward and pleasure for which I associate a feeling positive about that kind of stimulus and I’m going to look for it again. In parallel with the inclusion of digital learning methods, we should teach children and young people to be more aware of how to manage attention, concentrate and focus information even under the bombardment of countless stimuli. But we actually don’t like to do the much vaunted prevention. It is one of the most abused and least used words of the moment. We are throwing them into digital without tools. We are phenomena who criticize social platforms and video games without thinking of learning to walk with them and accompany them in their growth. And once again, in a few years, we will find ourselves putting patches and being forced to work on cognitive functions as well, not just on emotional ones. We must work to make them emotionally competent and digitally intelligent.
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