Social Media is a Teaching Tool

Having been critical of teachers befriending students on Facebook, it might seem a little rich for me to now be espousing the values of social media as a tool.

However, as a teacher connecting with other teachers, social media provides me with resources to develop my teaching practice. Although my use of Twitter is at best sporadic, when I do venture there I find a wealth of material for the areas I teach. I email these to myself and try to use them into my lessons where possible, making it a fairly productive use of social media. There are also opportunities to participate in Twitter discussions on areas of interest, such as edchatnz or engchatnz, and while I find these hard to follow (I probably need more practice) searching the hashtag is another way to get ideas.


Pinterest's visual bulletin format provides snapshots into a range of different teaching resources, which I pin and frankly often forget ever seeing. Not nearly so useful...

From a classroom perspective, students spend a phenomenal amount of time on social media and it makes sense to engage with them via the forums they are comfortable with.

Just as I use Twitter and Pinterest to gather resources, shouldn't students be able to get ideas from these sources? Sharples et al (2016) define this as 'learning from the crowd', where the public become a source of information and knowledge. Students can search for information about specific topics or post questions in the expectation of gathering a range of ideas and information.

Social media is, at its core, about making connections. Last year my Year 9 class were involved with the #NZReadAloud programme last year, which endeavoured to provide a similar framework for students using Edmodo. I strongly believe in the benefits of sharing ideas in these kinds of formats. Imagine the effect of classroom knowledge multiplied by three, ten, twenty times!

It's not just connecting with other students. A couple of years ago my class studied John Green's Paper Towns, and a couple of students were excited about the possibility of making contact with the author via Twitter, where he is very active. Although they never followed this up, the fact that authors such as Green, J.K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman communicate through these sources is motivating for interested students, where they can make real-time connections. I know how excited I was when an actress in one of my favourite programmes followed me on Twitter, even knowing it was a publicity tactic.

Seaman & Tinti-Kayne (2013) say teachers can introduce social media into their courses in two ways:
  • students as consumers of social media, "with no interaction, commenting or creation of new media required".
  • students as commenters on and creators of social media.
My next step is to move my students from being the consumers to creators of content. I have tried. My junior classes have diligently set up blogs with the intention of creating a portfolio of work to show off their learning, but my efforts to get these updated have been sporadic. They are also ineffective because their blogs become about me, the teacher, telling them what to post, rather than students taking ownership of their own content. At other times I've asked students to create online study guides, using tools such as Tumbler or Google sites. While they complete the work, nothing else happens to that content. Their next steps are to engage with others online, to have their ideas commented on and challenged where necessary.

The use of social media does provide teachers with challenges, but handled with care can open up a whole world for students.

References

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/8482

Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. UK: Pearson Learning Systems. Retrieved from: http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf

Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf

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