Tumblring into to the 21st century

Clumsy, cringy and often more the way your dad might dance at a wedding (Shout out to Mr Trickey senior) has probably been my approach to using Social media in the classroom. I have attempted a number of ways to integrate Social media into what I do in the classroom. My most recent effort was around using a Twitter hashtag and Tweeting some of my student's startup ideas on Twitter. On top of this, I have had students start Instagram accounts to share projects around Human Rights issues. One of my favourite uses has been asking the students to retell a historic event, for example a story for the Blitz, in the form of a tweet. Though all my efforts have mostly been in a haphazard way almost like a naughty school child just slipping in a Tweet to make the class feel a bit more novel and real, not in a deliberate and comprehensive way. Firstly who am I trying to get the student to connect with and for what purpose?

I do often wonder how my students actually use social media? Yet have never really spent the time to inquire into this. Snap chat is the Social media of choice and most of this seems to be inane yet original content. I have often seen that my students are excited by the concept of using Social media and though we have created accounts in class we have never really generated original content and anything of real substance. It has created some interesting links to the outside world though. One group of students got really excited about connecting with a NGO in South Africa who were raising awareness about sexual assault. These real-world connections are what we long for in the classroom as we sit isolated. Each year I teach a unit about Indigenous peoples and we visit the marae. Despite all my efforts in emailing and chasing though we have failed to get a link or connection to the Aboriginal communities in Austrailia and Native American people. Though my haphazard emailing and tweets towards various sources may have not been the best way to approach these tasks.

Comparatively looking at how others use Social Media in the classroom it is clear that it has to be tied to the curriculum and well thought out. Perhaps the example of at the start of the year expecting all students to have a Twitter account or having a class Twitter account would prove a useful resource. One idea I am currently toying with is having a closed G+ account this would allow students a place to curate content and potentially collaborate with other students throughout the school. This could also potentially create a library of past resources and content that students could be inspired by and remix? With it being easy to moderate space it would be also safe for the students. I have started to talk about this idea in Social Studies and one potential idea I had was this may also be a perfect platform to let the parents into as well as it would allow us to share progress made throughout the year and produce another avenue for feedback and communication. My colleagues seem less receptive to opening up the social media aspect to the parents when I brought it up.

So if I think about these perspectives what does it all mean. Firstly Social Media is not going away and as an educator in today's climate, it has to be a tool that we harness and allow students to explore and understand the power of. How best to do this I am unsure with content driven highschool subjects how can we allow an element of social media into looking at topics like Fractions for example? The retelling of the build-up to World war two and what was the most important event in the lead up could this be tweeted to another class, in the school or in the world? How can this connective tool enrich the students understanding of complicated topics and bring added depth to their ideas? I would love to have your input. One really exciting thing on here is a link explaining what the world of Tumblr is really all about as well could that be the platform that allows my student's more meaningful engagement with the content?

(I hope you can note my use of Jay and Johnson’s reflective model in this blog)

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

Whitaker, T., Zoul, J., & Casas, J. (2015). What connected educators do differently. New York, NY: Routledge.

Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/guidebook-social-media-in-classroom-vicki-davis

https://blog.sewickley.org/9-ways-to-use-social-media-in-your-classroom

http://www.teachhub.com/50-ways-use-twitter-classroom