Geeks, Gurus and Gadgets

In this week’s blogpost, I will use Jay and Johnson’s model (2002) to critically discuss and reflect on my use of social media within my classroom. How is social media being used in my classroom? Social media is a big part of my classroom and an integral part of my teaching practice already. Our classroom blog is a portal for learning and holds all the important information for students about what their learning tasks for the week are. Each student also has their own blog and they are expected to post regularly. Twitter has, over the last couple of years, also become an important aspect of our literacy programme, as we participate in Chapter Chat each term. During this time, we (read a particular chapter book and complete tasks related to this across the week. At the end of the week, we share our work, look and comment on other students work and answer comprehension texts, along with classrooms across the country. What does the research say about using social media? An...

For this week’s activity – exploring an ethical dilemma, I plan to use Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model to reflect on a situation that occurred a year or so ago at our school and to make some decisions in order to be prepared for similar situations, in the future. What? Last year, my relieving teacher had set up buddy sessions between our class and the class she teaches in at the other local school. During one of these sessions, the children were able to share any work they wished to with their buddy.   One student (Student A) shared his google document with his buddy (Student B) from the other school, giving him editing rights. Later that afternoon, I received an email from google to inform me that Student B   had edited the document, giving his full name. This had occurred after the class had returned to their school. As the name on the google email was unfamiliar to me, I opened the document to discover a swear word written across the work of S...