As an English Language Arts teacher, perhaps my opinion of social media in the classroom resembles something darker and more sinister than that of other subject area teachers. For me, based on my students' posts, social media is the place where proper punctuation, capitalization, and spelling go to die! Two years ago I attempted to use EDMODO as a site for students to post and respond to others' comments, but what I found is that because it so closely resembled Facebook, my students forgot their knowledge of conventions and resorted instead to typing with abbreviations that were unknown and inconsistent. I have since moved away from incorporating social media into my lessons. This is not to say that I'm not using digital tools and trying to innovate. I am! I guess I just see my role more as one of introducing new tools to them, and ones that were designed with more of an academic purpose in mind. Even when I do use some of the digital tools, I find myself asking, "What did that tool allow them to do that paper and a pen would not?" Sometimes I don't have an answer. For example, I dove right in to have my kids create digital mind maps as a pre-writing strategy after I learned of sites like bubbl.us and mindomo, but when all was said and done, could they not have simply created them on paper? Yes, but maybe for some kids the technology WAS the engagement piece. I"ll try to keep an open mind about giving social media another go, but deep down, I sort of feel like I'm selling out, like I'm so desperate to get the kids to like me, to like English, to like school, that I"m willing to allow them to use Instagram, Snapchat, etc. because it's what they do.
1 Comment
Rebecka
3/21/2016 12:07:45 am
You are on track with your concerns. You absolutely don't NEED to use social media if it's not making sense for what you want to accomplish. As for your question what did that tool allow them to do that paper and pen would not, I suggest checking out the SAMR model. Sometimes use of tech is for you (efficiency, workflow), sometimes tech is developing 21st century tech skills, and sometimes and ideally the use of tech helps to deepen learning. The SAMR model has different levels of use. Another model to look at is TPACK.
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Kirstin
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