I think social networking is a useful tool to use in the classroom. I really enjoyed the video we watched about how a teacher in Council Bluffs is using facebook to communicate to parents what their children are doing in the classroom through status updates. It is a great way to keep parents updated as well helping students learn how to synthesize information. Students are also learning editing skills. working on sentence structure and grammar. The students do not want to send out a status update with any mistakes in it! By using social networking with students at a young age, the students are learning appropriate uses for social networking. Civil discourse should be taught as young as possible, so later on in life, students will not ruin their reputation by posting something inappropriate online. Another site that would work for this is Edmodo. Edmodo is similiar to what facebook has to offer, but is a lot more secure so no creepers can creep the class page. Edmodo also allows the teacher to post quizzes and polls! However, by using facebook in the classroom, as opposed to edmodo, parents are more apt to participate in the facebook page because it is one less thing to log onto.
One thing I won't forget when I begin using any social networking site is to inform the school administrater! =)
I found my website from CI 201 finally today! Here is the link if you want to see it. I'm putting more on here so I won't lose it again!
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~kristin/KristinSchmidt/About_Me.html
Have a nice day!
I always like to think of the glass half full instead of half empty when thinking about social networking in my classroom. I really think that there are more positives than negatives, but we must go in with our eyes open and know what we are getting into. They are a set of technologies that can bring a lot of collaborative learning opportunities for our students.
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ReplyDeleteI never really thought it was a good idea to use social networking in the classroom, but this class has opened my eyes to using it. I have seen some positive examples and it makes me more open to using it!
It was pretty cool how that teacher got her students excited about writing by updating the Facebook status. It just goes to show that social networking can be very useful in the classroom when used appropriately!
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