Activity 7: Social media in teaching and professional development.

I have never been an active social media user. I have a Facebook account without really knowing how to use it in any great depth. I have it locked down so that it is completely private. I do not post to it but merely use it to keep track of a couple of personal groups that I am interested in.

Up until recently I did not have a Twitter account. I had a POND account but did not really use it. I have a social account called Strava which is how I keep in contact with my running friends.

I tell you this as it is important to know that I have never been an advocate or serious user of social media and I find it hard to relate to people who seem to relish describing every single detail of theirs and their families personal life to a global audience.

However, within the teaching community I am beginning to see the benefits of social media to enhance my own personal development. As a tool to teach Primary School children however, I think we have to be very careful with what social media applications we choose to expose them to.

Social Media in a Primary School Setting

The mainstream, popular social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google + etc) are not an appropriate tool to allow students to use in the classroom. The reason for this is based in large part to the age restrictions of these sites. You will see in the following diagram that these accounts have different age limits commencing from the age of 13:

Quite simply my views regarding primary school children are that if you are under the age of 13, (which all primary school children are) then they should not be taught to use these applications. The legal age limit is there for a reason and if we are teaching our primary students to use social media platforms within the classroom then surely aren’t we giving them the message that it is ok to break the law?

An example of underage children using social media illegally can be found in the following video title ‘Using Social Media in the Classroom’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno.  (Cassidy, 2013)

However, despite my best efforts to educate my primary students regarding the dangers of social media at their early age, some do still access and use these sites. I have had children in my class that have Facebook accounts and I have seen first hand the bullying that can be carried out through these sites both by children and parents. I have also had many students that have said they have ‘friends’ on these sites that they have never met and who have no understanding that they may not be who they say they are. In this regard it is important that a CyberSafety and Digital Citizenship program is in place in a primary school and that these issues are modelled, taught and discussed with both children and the wider community.

My use and understanding of Social Media Platforms

I am still learning about which applications fall under the umbrella of ‘Social Media’. Having researched this topic further, I have found a definition from the The Educational Council of New Zealand.  Their website states that  ‘Social media embraces web-based and mobile-based technologies to facilitate interactive communication between organisations, communities and individuals.’

The infographic below also encapsulates pictorially what social media is. ​

With this definition I can acknowledge that without realising it, I am currently using a number of social media sites within my classroom. These are:

ClassDojo - A behavioural tool and an easy and convenient way to keep in touch with the parents both individually, through all parent emails and through sharing our learning using a simple blog interface. The children are engaged with it and the parents feedback that it is a fantastic way to understand what their children are doing at school and an easy way to keep in contact with me.

Weebly - The students have created a personal website with a blog attached so that they may share their learning - (Password restricted and not made public). This encourages reflection, interaction with parents at home and feedback/forward with their peers as they read each other's work and comment on it.

Google Sites - Site of my room with a list of resources to help the students and parents. Here both students and teachers can post comments (Only if you are a member of the glenfield.school.nz domain).

Pobble - A child friendly website based in the UK where children from around the world can comment on others work. All work and comments are mediated to ensure safety for the children. I have partnered with a school in the UK. The children from each school publish their writing and then comment on it. This gives the students a global authentic audience where they can safely publish their work and gives the teachers access to a limitless supply of models and ideas to use within the classroom.

When I have decided on the use of a social media platform that I wish to use in my classroom I will always seek the feedback from my Principal once I have outlined why I wish to use it. I also ensure that I receive written consent from parents. If they have questions, I invite them to talk to me about them and I ensure that I never allow a student to use a platform if the parents have not agreed for them to do so.

All of these sites I am now using successfully everyday in my teaching. I am come across more of them all the time and evaluate them on their potential merits to aid the children in their learning. I am also starting to use social media applications more, to develop my own professional learning, as seen in the section below.

The Use of Social Media in my own Professional Development

As I have become more open to the use of social media as a learning tool so I have realised the many benefits they have on me as a teacher. Until the Mindlab course I had never considered that Twitter and Facebook could enhance my own professional learning due to my ignorance of them and my own hangups on the use of social media. However, I am now starting to reap the benefits due to my more open nature and better understanding of how they can aid me in my own learning.

Just taking Twitter alone I now belong to several groups such as:

• TheMindLab
• Ted Talks
• Education Nation
• TeachThought
• MindShift
• Edutopia

I am also connected to several individual educators and teachers through Facebook and Twitter, whom I keep in contact with on a regular basis.

Below is a list of the social media sites that I am now using for purely developmental purposes:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google +
• LinkedIn
• Youtube
• Pinterest
• Google Docs

However, I am finding that the ideas, provocations, news articles and general wealth of information that I am exposed to through these sites can be both a blessing and a curse due to the wealth of information that I am bombarded with on a daily basis.

I would have to say at this point that Twitter and Google + are the two sites that are best supporting my professional development as they are simply the two sites that I am using the most. I have talked about some of the groups that I belong to with Twitter and how easy it is for me to connect globally to teachers and educational organisations around the world but Google + is also a platform that I am using constantly at the moment.

I have only used it for the purposes of connecting to my Mindlab course and my fellow students and have not delved into it any deeper than this at the moment but will do so once I have completed this course. However, the benefits of interacting with my peers, discussing current trends, seeing what other people are up to regarding assignments, posing questions and receiving answers has helped me immeasurably during this course.

Finally, I created a Google Form survey of how other teachers in my ICT team view and use social media. It is something that we have never discussed and I was somewhat surprised by their answers in relation to how much they use social media along with how they use it. I will now use this as a starting point to gain a shared understanding of how we should be sharing our experiences with each other and the rest of the school, how they use social media in the classroom and how we should use social media within the classroom.

I hope this post has allowed you to understand the journey I am currently undertaking in the world of social media, the concerns that I have over it, the overwhelming amount of information that I am having to contend with and ultimately the benefits that I am gaining through connecting with a global virtual network of teachers and learners.
Finally, this activity has made me aware of the need to discuss this school-wide amongst the teachers, so that we may forge a collective pathway on how best to use social media both with our students and on a professional developmental level. I am already thinking of creating a social media group whereby the teachers meet informally to discuss the latest trends that we are reading about together with how we are using social media within our own classrooms.

Bibliography
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[Cassidy, Kathy]. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom [Video File] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno
[New Zealand Education Council] What is Social Media. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2016, from http://teachersandsocialmedia.co.nz/what-social-media

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