A tool or a fool?

Social media as a tool?

I'm a little old school, I won't lie. I struggle to think that a class will not be able to resist themselves and socialize as opposed to social medialise (I'm using my "bloggers" license with this one). But then again, I think about what we've learnt in some of our classes and I think "How much faith am I putting in my students?". Do I trust them enough to let them use the tool? Or will they use blunt force to mess with their learning? But then I begin to think, "maybe I'm just making this about me." So I should be thinking about how much social media can actually benefit my students as they progress through their education. 

So being able to critically engage with others in the class is something which I value highly, and if they can do that in their free time that is actually what I would want them to do. And if they're engaging in class, they're making less noise! I would love them to write letters to each other to make it more applicable, using the correct format of course, and to make it fun for them to work. It's also a really useful tool for the teachers to keep track of progress because it's all in one place. If learning becomes applicable to the child through social media then it should be used. Teachers should be willing to adapt and should especially be willing to teach kids how to adapt. I think it's a really important lesson.

I think using tools to communicate with students when they're off campus is brilliant. Heck, I'm forgetful and I would have loved a little reminder about homework or being told if school was cancelled for the day. It makes communication easy and you can be sure that every student has received or heard the message.

I strongly believe that social media can be useful. But I will be very selective about which platforms I use, making sure that kids are LEARNING through the fun and not just having fun.

So after realizing that I need to say how social media can be used in the classroom, I would use Facebook. With Facebook you can post pictures and videos which can be used for experiments and you can also post comments which are longer and can lead to a lot of interaction between the students. They can comment on how the experiment is working, what they can improve on and change and comment on each other's experiments to help them improve. Natural Science can be fun!

As ever, watching the walking footprints.