Activity 5: Using social online networks in teaching or professional development

This week I have reflected on how I am using social media in my teaching practise using the Jay and Johnson’s (2002) reflective model.

As a “digital immigrant”, (Prensky 2001) I find the public social media world quite intimidating and overwhelming at times. There is so much new information to learn, and new applications are always arriving. I feel unqualified to keep up with it all. In fact at times I think it is just another thing for me as a teacher to try and do.

Yet within the confines of my own personal community of practise, I do find elements of social media empowering. This year I have been developing my flipped classroom practise, so either creating clips for students or using already created youtube clips to help preload students learning for the coming weeks tasks. I have introduced google classroom as a management system for students to access instructions, videos and timetables. Students are currently using blogs to post reflections and evidence of learning for parent comments. Google documents and emails act as collaborative learning spaces where students help guide planning, while collaborating with each other through wonderings and creations.

These simple changes have seen a massive amount of improvement in student engagement and the personalisation of students learning. Time is now set aside during my planning and teaching schedule to help students find resources around topics of interest.

I am not ready to allow my year 5 & 6 class to use twitter or facebook as an opportunity to connect with a wider community. I struggle to grasp that a child needs to leave the confines of their school, or community to find someone who has a similar interest than they do (Magette, 2014). I don’t believe the time taken to monitor student activity and ensure students safety while using social media for the purpose of seeking feedback from a wider audience is justified. I recognise that at year 5 & 6 students need to understand they belong to a global world, although I am not convinced that twitter is the answer to ensure this happens. Yet when students know that their work is being shared on seesaw or uploaded to youtube, I, like many teachers find students quality of work and engagement to the task becomes more serious. This is an area I don’t plan well for, and I should.  

One of the difficult things to work out as a teacher is ‘balance’, the debate continues about what teachers should spend their time on in the classroom. A myriad of comments and arguments can be found about how teachers should be spending time teaching reading, writing and math knowledge to their students (using digital or traditional methods). I along with many of my colleagues agree that in this day and age it should be a combination. Now the question is what is the balance between the two methods. I believe student engagement and focus on the task should help guide the teacher to know. How do our students in class learn best? Once we answer this honestly, with no prejudice to one particular method, then we truly are making the best use of social media, rather than just doing it because it is there to use.

REFERENCES

Jay and Johnson’s (2002) reflective model  

Magette, K. (2014). Embracing social media : a practical guide to manage risk and leverage opportunity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.(Available in Unitec library).

Prensky. Marc., (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1., On the Horizon., Vol. 9 Issue: 5, pp.1-6