Track 17: DIY- You Pick!

I have a lot of experience using social media in my personal life but not as much in the classroom so I wanted to explore ways that I could use various social media outlets in my library. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat are just a few that I use. Since I teach elementary school I don’t always incorporate the social media into the classroom with the younger children but I try and incorporate into my lessons for the older students. It is challenging sometimes since our technology for the building is on carts and our class sizes this year are so big that there is not enough pieces of technology for every students. Yes we have brand new amazing pieces of technology but sometimes it is more of a pain. I do have a Twitter account for my Library and update that regularly so parents can see what is going on in my room.

I absolutely agree with the use of social media in the classroom and believe that when used in the proper manner can be an effective tool. I find that I have great relationships with my students because I try and stay up to date with what is going on so that I can relate to them on a different level. I use Twitter in the classroom to showcase what is going in my room and the kids love that I share information that way. I also think that parents appreciate the use of social media in the classroom and for many of them they like to be able to stay up to date with what is going on, and using social media helps that.

Students are without a doubt better engaged in the classroom as well when they are allowed to use social media. It is what they know and many of them are better at using it then most adults. To them it may not seem like homework for them to have to write a blog post, or have to tweet something out. All children express themselves in different ways and for some being able to do that in a different way is beneficial for them. I do not think that social media is going anywhere and we as educators need to somehow find a spot for it in our classrooms even if we do not personally like it.  I do understand that there are some cons like students taking advantage, students becoming distracted, and privacy being compromised but if these problems can be addressed head on and in the beginning I think it will be a good thing for both teacher and students alike.

Some lesson ideas that I think I could use in my classroom would be a Pinterest lesson where my 5^th grade students would learn about historical and current figures. They would each create a board about an individual that they chose and would have the option to pin anything from articles, images, and quotes. I would have the students follow one another so that they could generate ideas from one another and see what their classmates are all working on. They would be able to work on this project from home as well since the only thing they would need is Internet access. After doing the research part of it on Pinterest they could take all of that information that they collected to write a report or do a project on that person. When they present the project they will have their Pinterest boards up on the Smartboard to show their classmates. I think that my students would love this project and would enjoy using a social media website in school for a project.

I could also have students use Twitter to create a profile for their favorite story book character. They would have to do some research beforehand to figure out different traits about their characters. If they did not know some information like birthdays and such I would allow them to make that information up. Once the profiles were set and ready to go they would have to tweet once a day things that they think their characters from the book might tweet. I would teach them what a # is and how they can follow different ones on Twitter. I would choose the #storybookcharacters for them to follow. They would be able to generate some ideas for their character profiles that they created.  They can also dress up like their characters and post things. They would have the freedom to do whatever they would like as long as they were following and using the #storybookcharacters. This would be an assignment that they could also work on at home and tweet more than once a day if they felt necessary. I would of course teach internet safety as well and what would be appropriate to post and what is not appropriate to post.