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.
