ETL523 

Module 4.2 

Social, cultural and global perspectives

Activity #7: Social media and educational networking - finding the evidence to support this.

"Social media used for educational networking helps to connect learners in exciting ways and  therefore should be considered as a vital part of the DLE" (Lindsay, 2014, Module 4.2).

What are your thoughts about this? What is your position on the use of social media for learning locally as well as globally?

 I can see many advantages for learning using social media.. These can be looked at in terms of what teachers learn and what students learn. 

For teachers, there are so many advantages in learning locally and globally. Locally, it allows teachers within a school or a school system to swap ideas, resources and solutions to problems. It also, helps to broaden the technological teaching tools that educators are using. Also, for teachers, it helps them map student progression. This can be done by using blogging by the children as a teaching tool. The blog can act as a digital portfolio of their work. It allows the teacher and the student to see how their work is progressing over time. 

In my classroom, this week the children wrote a plan for their comment on my blog post  in their books. The following week they wrote a short comment using their plan. I did not edit it, instead I allowed it to be published as they wrote it. I am hoping to re-examine these posts next term to talk to them about being careful  about how they post and what they write from a digital citizenship filter. It is my hope that it will act as a base point from which they can see how their writing can be improved and how it has improved. Or am I wrong in approaching it this way? Should we just be focusing on the content of what they wrote and the fact that they are just learning to type and to express themselves online?

For students, there are a number of issues regarding social media. Primarily, is that if they use social media locally for learning there many ways in which this benefits their progress. It allows for feedback from teachers on their work, it means that they can access resources they need to work at home and school, it improves their problem solving skills as they begin to help each other and it improves their typing skills. The latter is a definite issues for  primary students.

My position regarding the global use of social media by students is that they are always in the global world whenever they interact digitally. Having said that, I think we can do more for our students than that. Using the protective nature of a wiki, for example, we can invite and allow other students and teachers from around the globe to comment on their work.