In terms of this reflective blog I thought I would start with using this guiding question to help with my thoughts and reflections about using social networks in teaching or professional development.
What are some key features of social media that are beneficial for teaching and learning? Why?
Firstly, I would like to begin with my background in Teaching, i started off at a School in Panmure, Auckland known as Tamaki Primary. Now, Tamaki Primary School was a fully digital. Decile 1 School which is part of the Manaiakalani Education Trust. I taught for the past 3 years a year 5-6 class in a 1:1 device classroom. I believe that use of Social Media has great benefits for teaching and learning.
In Today's society, we are surrounded by different social medial platforms and the children that we team, this is what they know and the era that they are growing up in which is the 21st Century.
I believe that Social networking is a very powerful tool in terms of collaboration and communication. Through social networking there are many pros that can be gained, these are:
- Ability to be able to connect with different people from around the world.
- Easy, fast and instant communication.
- Real time news and information discovery.
When looking in terms of Education and how children can be benefited from the use of social networking.Some of the pros are:
- Increased student collaboration with children not only in their classrooms but also with other children from other schools around New Zealand and the World.
- Increased student participation and engagement in their learning.
- Group work is easier to review/comment/feedback on.
- Rich use of e-learning media available to the children.
- Use of video conferencing.
In terms of Teacher and their professional development. I use my reflective blog which I continually use to reflect on my teaching practice. This is where I put up students work as well as videos of myself teaching. My blog is public so everyone from around the world can view it. I also use google+ where I leave comments on other Mind Lab teachers work and blogs and this is also how they leave comments on my teaching. I find this really useful as there are teaching from around the world as well as nationally with a range of experiences with whom I can engage and communicate with in terms of my teaching and learning.
In the classroom in terms of coming from a digital school. Our students all had their own blogs. On their blogs they would daily put up the work that they had been doing in class as well as learning. Their blogs were public so anyone from around the world could view and comment. Also the networking schools could also comment which was great for students getting feedback in their learning as well as feed forward. Kids were always engaged, and this was a way of them celebrating their learning. It also created a digital footprint so that teachers as well as students were able to go back and just see how far they have come in terms of their learning. The benefits is that there work is always there digitally and they can always go back to it. On their blogs also they use a range of apps such as photos, making a video, screen casting their work which makes it more engaging for their audience and effective and also fun for them. The use of Social Media also lets children: Learn, Create and Share.
The use of Social Media as a teacher at a digital school also helped with getting more parent engagement in terms of students learning at a decile one School.
In terms when reflecting on the use of social media and its challenges, safety was a big one.
Our school because it was part of an education trust there were lots of policies put in place in terms of cyber safety and how to use the internet and be safe around it. Cyber safety was part of our professional development as well as what we had to regularly teach as part of our curriculum on a weekly basis. We also use Hapara tool which we always had projected up so that children could see that the teacher was monitoring what they were going on etc. As teachers we were always modeling appropriate ways of using language and behavior at all times. We also gave out rewards for certain about of blog pots that were going out from children and also appropriate use of the internet also. We also talk about digital footprint. This meaning that whatever we put out onto the internet always stays there, it leaves a digital footprint so that everyone is able to see it and view it and it can always be retrieved so we need to be very careful what we put out there.
As teachers we also need to reflect and think about the purpose of Social media. Why is it that I am using social networking? Whats the benefit for me and whats the benefit for the students that I am teaching.
References:
Education Council.(2012). Establishing safeguards.[video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49216520
Manaiakalani. (2017). Manaiakalani.org. Retrieved 21 August 2017, from http://www.manaiakalani.org/
Social media / Engaging through technologies / Beyond the classroom / enabling e-Learning - enabling eLearning. (2017). Elearning.tki.org.nz. Retrieved 21 August 2017, from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Beyond-the-classroom/Engaging-through-technologies/Social-media
Source: Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno
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