Back in class we made our own 'computers' using card and knitting needles to sort their own personal data punch cards.I lived in a farm cottage at the time, where I shared a party-line phone with two of my neighbours.
Not long after I bought my first personal computer, an Amstrad. There was no internet or online social networking then, I unplugged and lugged that heavy PC to and from school in my car most days of the week so I could share this new technology with my class. Wow! How things have changed in the three decades I have been teaching.
Today I am an e-Leader in my school, supporting staff and students to be connected and keep up to date with new technology. After shying away from my first experiences of social media, why would I want to share my personal life with everyone on Bebo, I am now a proponent of using social media to share professional knowledge and new innovations and ideas. I am inspired and motivated every day by what is shared online. I now understand the importance of being familiar with the social media platforms available to not only enhance my own knowledge and keep me up to date, but also to help promote the benefits and appropriate use of these platforms to enhance learning opportunities for our students.
Turner (2010) divides social media into three categories - social media platforms that help you network ; social media platforms that help you promote; and social media platforms that help you share. Using these three categories to reflect on my professional use of social media, this is how I am utilizing social media in my teaching practice.
Social media platforms that help me to network:
Facebook - at school we use a closed facebook page to help keep parents in our Māori-medium classes informed about upcoming events and other things happening at our kura. The potential challenge here is keeping it professional when we have parents, and potentially students, able to access and comment on this page and also see the profile pictures of the staff who belong to it.
I mainly only use facebook in a professional context, and therefore my 'friends' are the likes of NZ Teachers (Primary), etc.
Google+ - this is one of my favourite go-to places to learn about new trends and innovations in educational technology. It is also a great platform for requesting support or information if I am unsure about new technology I might want to try.
Linkedin - an interesting platform to network with others and share skills, employment history and education. I see the main purpose of this platform as providing information and opportunity for future employment.
Twitter - I use Twitter on a regular basis and just love this as a quick and easy platform to share ideas professionally. As a school we tweet to the school community to keep them updated and connected about what is happening at our school, almost as it is happening. A challenge with Twitter, is having control over retweets and comments and ensuring photo permission for students in photos.
Social media platforms that help me to promote:
YouTube - this is a great platform to promote our school. By posting videos we create on YouTube, we are able to reach a wide and varied audience. It also has some great features such as Playlists and editing options for supporting targetted learning. The main challenge is to keep the focus on appropriate and useful content.
Social media platforms that help me to share:
Google sites - We use Google sites for collaborative team planning; student sites to share our planning, student tasks and other learning links; to share learning outcomes and processes with parents; and also for our PRT's documentation. A challenge with a site is to keep it updated and interesting to revisit. Adding links to blogs and Twitter feeds are two ways to do this.
email - Used regularly by all staff for communication purposes, and less often by students. The challenge with email is to keep it professional, appropriate and be careful who we email to.
Blogging - This is an excellent platform for sharing information. I replaced our inefficient 'Staff Daily Notices' exercise book with a staff blog several years ago. Not only do we have a great record of notices staff need to share, staff can access this private blog at any time from anywhere, and it has been a great learning tool for those self-professed technologically-challenged staff members. We also have team blogs for sharing learning processes and outcomes with the school community, and students are using personal blogs as e-portfolios, to share their learning journey. I now have this personal blog to document and share my professional learning and ideas. This is a great self-reflection tool.
Using social media allows us as educators to extend learning opportunities for ourselves, our students and staff outside the walls of our learning spaces, and to also invite the world into our classrooms. It brings with it opportunities and challenges I could never have imagined when I first started teaching, but enables us to be future-focused, global, 21st-century learners.
By using social media we can be connected to the 'real' world, develop a 'world view' and empathy for others, and have authentic purpose for developing our communication and digital citizenship skills. The challenge as educators, is to try to keep up and have the confidence to give it a go.
References:
Melhuish, K. Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Source: p. 36-44 in Chapter 3 of Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Office of Ed Tech. (2013, Sep 18). Connected Educators. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=216&v=K4Vd4JP_DB8
New Zealand Teachers Council.(2012). Establishing safeguards.[video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49216520
Turner, J. (2010). Top 52 Social Media Platforms Every Marketer Should Know. http://60secondmarketer.com/blog/2010/04/09/top-52-social-media-platforms/
Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno
Kia ora Ruth. What a great read. You actually stirred some inner thoughts for me and really said them quite eloquently. I too am of the opinion that social media allows us to 'extend learning opportunities for ourselves, our students and staff in learning spaces. Too often, we hear about the negative aspects of social media and so I advocate that exposing others to displays and examples of 'good use' can be facilitated by us being confident users and navigators of these tools. I love your breakdown of the 3 platforms which on reflection, motivates me to want to go into 'Twitter' and become a better user within this platform. I so relate to your korero about country schools and early days of lugging bulky computers around. Party lines...well, like on FB, if you know what this is, then you must be old. That's me too girl. Yay... and I make no apologies for it. Love your blog.
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