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? And what does it mean for me and my
practice? What implications are there for me in the future?
It was
interesting to read Kyle Stadalman’s comments, (in Magnette 2014) where he
found the quality of the work had increased with the knowledge that the work
would be uploaded and shared in some way with a wider audience. I have found
this is the case in some instances and with some students, but not all and am
wondering how I can improve this aspect. I wonder if students don’t have an
expectation that someone will read their posts – and feel they are a bit like
their literacy book in that it is just for the teacher. Currently, we are part
of the student blogging challenge and I am making a huge emphasis on reading
blogs from around the world and commenting on them – in order for them to
comment on ours. Next year, I plan to introduce a blog commenting challenge for
a few weeks each term, to start our blogs with parents subscribing to them and
encouraging parents to comment by having students ask questions of their
audience.
Stadalman (in
Magnette 2014) also talked about using Facebook and that by adding an image or
picture, he felt he reached a wider audience. Over this year, I have also found
this to be true and the number of hits, or views on my earlier posts – which
were just text are a lot less than the posts I have made in the later part of
the year. As an experiment, during writing this reflection, I added an event to
my closed Facebook group for a school event coming up at the weekend, within
seconds I had one parent accepting the invite.
This tells me that as well as my classroom calendar – a list of events
on Facebook at both the classroom and school level are a powerful way of
reaching our parent community.
My
hesitations around using social media in the classroom, are really based around
informing our parent community and whanau that, under teacher supervision, and
with our guidance and control, these networks are a valuable part of our
classrooms. This year, I invited parents in to watch and participate in our
twitter chat so that they could be part of the learning happening. I need to,
as digital technology leader, help my teachers to have the courage to open
their doors for parents. As Denise Kendall (in Magnette 2014) found, our
parents also need help and guidance with social networking. As a school, or
with our students, we need to create resources and plan for educating and
encouraging our whanau with being part of their child’s online activity.
Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing
complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching
and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.
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