Social Media in the Classroom

This week really challenged my beliefs on social media in the classroom.  I have always steered clear of using it both in my personal and professional life because I've seen some of the horror stories out there.  I've also seen some of the stories showing negative consequences of students being on social media, which is another reason I've stayed away from using it in my classroom.  However, I do recognize the potential benefits it could have in regards to communication with parents, students, and members of the community.  Also, many articles pointed out that it is our job as teachers to model appropriate social media use to our students.  Trying to keep an open mind, I looked up ways I could start doing this myself and for this weeks assignment I made an Adobe Spark video.


I'm not sure how much social media I'll introduce into my classroom this semester, but I do realize it's something I need to be thinking about going forward.  For now, I'll continue using the websites I currently use in my classroom, which I have now created a Symbaloo Webmix for!  I always (silently) complain about my students not bookmarking our important sites and always needing to ask for help when finding a website we've used countless times already.  Now, I can just have them bookmark the Webmix--or create their own and set it as their homepage--so that all of their important websites are in one place!


As usual, this week had a lot of new ideas for me to explore going forward.  I want to make a Symbaloo learning path for a lesson/unit in the future.  I'm thinking it would be perfect on a day I knew I would miss so I could use it as a sub-plan.  I also want to use Padlet as a virtual field trip where students find pictures about a math topic and post them for their classmates to see.  Admittedly, this week was a bit more difficult for me to instantly find applications for some of the sites.  But with a little digging and thinking, I was able to find some inspiration and have added a few more resources to my pocket.

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