Social Media in the K-12 Classroom?
I can't help but keep thinking about how I could use social media in my 5th grade classroom.
Tools I already use - Remind & Class Dojo. Remind is supported by my district, Dojo is frowned upon because of privacy issues. In fact, that is the issue I see with using socials in my class. Our district is very persnickety about privacy with FERPA and all, as they should be. FERPA is basically like HIIPA, but for students. It protects student information and identity. Using socials may infringe on privacy rights of my students, which means, no socials for me. Additionally, the district blocks many of the social media sites I would consider using.
It was interesting to see some of the research findings regarding student's opinions of teachers and social media in the article "Towards an understanding of social media use in the classroom: a literature review". Students reported an uneasiness when it came to interacting with their teachers online, they also think we don't know how to use socials - how dare they - have they seen my Tik Tok???? lol My students are always blown away that I even know what some of the social media fads of the moment are.
I am still working on wrapping my brain around the use of social media in my classroom. What has helped, overwhelmingly, is the opportunity to learn and use new tools through this course, and I appreciate it. I can only imagine my students, or most of them, would feel the same way. I've witnessed the excitement when I introduce a new online tool for review, for example: Kahoot, Blooket or Quizziz. But the newness wears off after a while. Hopefully, I can have a bigger bag of tricks next year, thanks to this class.
Van Den Beemt, A., Thurlings, M., & Willems, M. (2019). Towards an understanding of social media use in the classroom: A literature review. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 29(1), 35–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939x.2019.1695657
It's interesting to read about the K-12 perspective of using social media in the classroom cause I'm only familiar with the college level perspective. I think something that translates for both settings is that the "newness" you mentioned can have a tendency to fade away and take that initial excitement away. I do think that social media has the chops to stand the test of time but it's something I'm still struggling with too. How do we keep it as a part of the course and not just a trend that fades away quickly?
ReplyDeleteYes - I agree, and what I have found, at least with 10 year olds, is to switch it up. Never use something ALL of the time. Share the love! Haha. But that seems to work for me. Again, I worry about our FERPA requirements, the county is very rigid when it comes to this, so I wonder how much social media I can use and get away with. But somewhere, on another blog I mentioned taking a screen shot of a tweet, and then embed it into my Canvas as a discussion and have the kids interact that way - that is if they KEEP Canvas this year. One never knows these days.
DeleteThe way Doc (Dr. Dennen) incorporates the MASSIVE amounts of resources and the opportunity to 'build our own pathway' but recording it on weekly participating logs is a great way to not get bored with platforms... also, the challenges.. those are what come to mind when I read your post, but there are so many strategies that she incorporates in this class, I think you'll be set for the rest of your career in regards to incorporating social media into learning! But we have to keep up to date too...
DeleteYes - keeping up can be hard when you consider all of the other things pushed on to teachers by the district and site admins. They should just let us teach, and stay out of it! LOL
DeleteI think that social media has the potential to be a powerful tool in the classroom. I think that Kahoot and Blooket are not as powerful because they don't have the autonomy that social media does. I think that what will help social media stand the test of time is the sense of self-efficacy that it will create the students. I am also a big proponent of collaboration and I think social media could give students a chance to collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other. I mean even as a graduate student, I look at other people's posts and comments to help me synthesize my ideas some time. Students in the lower grades need to have the same opportunity. I am siked to have a some new tricks up my sleeve this year too.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - I can, and WILL find a way for this to work! There are just too many options to NOT try. I love the idea of the kids collaborating with each other via socials. I mean, they already do that using messaging in Canvas - I just can't see it - so that's a problem indeed.
DeleteCheers to new tricks!