19 April 2016

Social Media in Education

Social Media in Education

There can be no doubt that there has been a huge movement in social media 
in all aspects of life, education is no exception.  Working in a primary school 
there are many rules and regulations about being under the age of 13 and 
having a social media account.  Although saying that I am always amazed at 
how many students under the age of 13 have their own social media accounts.  
As a direct result of this it is very important to speak about digital citizenship, 
rights and responsibilities with the students. 

What we have done in our school is to create a learning platform for all of our 
students, creating their own social media accounts, but we as a school can monitor 
and administer rights to the various learners.  We use both Google Apps for 
Education and Microsoft Office 365 so that all students can use either one.  
The one great thing is that we have managed to use a single sign on so that the 
students do not have to worry about logging onto the one account and then having 
to log into a different account to change platforms. 

I need to give my age away and mention that while I was at school there were no 
computers, Internet or even cell phones, as a result many people in my age group 
do not have multiple social media accounts, but normally have one which is 
predominately used to stay in contact with friends and family around the world.   
As a result there has been a little bit of apprehension with regards to teachers 
changing the way in which content is delivered.  We have also done extensive 
training with our staff so that the students can communicate, chat, upload 
assignments, etc with the teacher involved.  This has been a great mine-shift for 
the teachers, but I believe that it is an important one.  It allows staff and students 
to work after hours as well as being able to create collaboration projects between 
different students so that they can work on at their own time.  The students however 
think that this is awesome and really enjoy working in this manner.

There are really great advantages to this, going more paperless, students not loosing 
their work, parents been able to see the students work and all their assessments, 
as well as the dog not eating homework to mention a few. 

We have also implemented this into subjects that do not always lend itself to ICT, 
namely physical education.  Last term the students completed their theoretical 
component through social media, namely blogs and wikis.


I do believe that using social media in classrooms is a great way to keep the students 
more actively involved and the more things that we do that is aligned to the 21st 
century student the easier our jobs as teachers become.

07 April 2016

Simple Learning Time

Simple Learning Time
Two Parklands College Learners, Stephan and Luke, have developed an app called 
Simple Learning Time.

Simple Learning Time is a free educational app that has both a digital time and 
analogue clock display. Students can move the hands of the clock to display 
different times of the day in both 24 hour and 12 hour time formats. 
A rotating background indicates whether it is night or day. 
This can be used in many fun ways in the classroom.

Well done!!