Social media has made it brilliantly easy to find new and valuable information. Even just 'Facebooking' with co-workers has been a great way to share ideas, articles, and videos about lessons, theory, practices that serve to improve instruction and learning. I have a coworker who is putting social emotional learning at the forefront of her practice and we have shared apps., videos and articles that address mindfulness, a feature in the driving question of my research. An added benefit is that I have a sense that we are building more successful work relationships as we are finding things in common or simply sharing a joke. We are definitely connecting and this is creating a positive work environment. I hope that Twitter will add to this. I have never considered having a twitter account prior to this class and might have even put it on the list of 'Things That I Will Never Do.' That said, I am already finding it useful and will attempt to dive into it a little more deeply. For me, it is a need to become more comfortable with the tool and this will come with practice. I liken the twitter experience to the neighborhood analogy. I need to get out of my comfort zone if I want to seek new and innovative approaches to teaching. I need to go to new places. Facebook has been a great way to share ideas with friends, but it is time to seek out professionals and mentors from whom I can learn additional insights. As far as critical issues to consider I suppose I would be concerned with keeping this a professional tool and not get hooked in socially. I can tend to be distracted by social media and I might log on to my computer to check an email only find that I have 'slipped down the rabbit hole' of eye catching information. I can lose an hour quickly and become completely derailed from my initial task. More importantly, I am concerned with the privacy of my students, so until there are more clear guidelines in place from my school district, I will resist tweeting any photos or videos that include my students' faces. I appreciated Patrick Larkin's response to a student's inappropriate social media post. I am in agreement that it needs to be addressed, as he had advised the principal, to the entire school because many students are doing it whether they are getting caught or not. There are so many variations of this scenario that it is hard to say how I would respond. Like all student situations, I would start with a discussion with the student to find out what the thinking was behind the post. If the post made the student unsafe or mentioned illegal activity I would follow up with advise from the principal to decide if the parents or police need to be involved. But if it was just something profane, then I would simply talk to the student and then try to open this to discussion in my class or ask the principal to address this with all students. Children want to seek attention and develop their identities, however, they are not always clear in what way they are to do this without developing a negative persona. We keep talking to them about the permanence of what they say, the wide audience it reaches, bullying...but for some it does not seem to get through until they suffer a natural consequence. What we do and say matters whether it is to someone's face or through social media. Therefore, the lessons need to be geared towards empathy and social emotional learning, so that students see the media tool as an extension of their personal interactions and not something separate that allows you to say what you normally would not. Students need to receive lessons on these topics long before they begin using social media tools. My niece attends middle school at a Waldorf School and they are just beginning the process of learning technology. The very first lesson they were given was to read different resumes of potential employees that they were to 'hire.' They were then given these individuals social media profiles. They were easily able to see that not only were some people untruthful, but that they might be the type of person you would not want to hire, much less befriend. I thought this was a powerful way to begin and am hoping that my school district is gearing up to create similar lessons, if not guidelines, that help educators to instruct students to navigate the social media world in which they live.
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AuthorJennifer Wade ArchivesCategories |