Incorporating Social Media in the classroom.

When teachers think of social media, they immediately think of learners being distracted, being on Facebook, not listening to the lesson or messaging other learners and thus distracting them as well. My notion on this subject is, if you can’t beat it, join it. Some teachers don’t even realize their learners are using social media while they are busy with a lesson. Why shun social media when you can incorporate it in your classroom and lesson. Like what Vicki Davis said in her article, A Guidebook for social media in the classroom, “social media is here.” It’s here to stay, it is one of the most common forms of communication these days and the chances that your students while end up using it (If they aren’t using it already) is 100%.

My curriculum studies are focused primarily on natural and life science. I could incorporate social media in my classroom especially during experiments and science expos. I could create a save environment online for my learners to engage with other learners and also experts in the field asking and sharing ideas. I could use this as a way to monitor my learners’ progress and grade according to the amount of research that went into the specific project. My learners would also be able to find information on a specific topic discussed in class after which they would be able to do an online quiz. Making my life as a teacher so much easier, as it is easier to monitor what my learners know and with what they are still experiencing difficulty.

Social media will create an interactive class with better communication between learners and learner and teacher. This should be a safe space and learners should be notified about the dangers that social media can bring. Thus creating open-minded individuals who knows how to use social media and not to misuse it.

According to Nicholas Provenzano’s article on communicating with students through social media, I must agree that this makes communicating outside the classroom so much easier especially using twitter. After reading about the Reminder app, I would consider using this in my classroom as it would make communication easier and probably more effective. Making a whatsApp group with your classroom would also increase the communication between learner and teacher. It would also be a great platform to discuss homework, group projects or just anything that happened outside school which the learners want to share. Using twitter, instagram or blogging would make teaching easier and a bit more effective, but as I mentioned previously that you should inform the students about the dangers social media can bring and teach them to be save online and to notice the warning signs while always contacting an adult they trust when they see these warning signs. Other than that social media is a great platform for interactive teaching!

Clearing the confusion…

In my first blog I vaguely mentioned that technology is taking over education and we should stick to the more conventional ways of teaching as I clearly showcased my distaste of digital pedagogy in the classroom; let’s just say that I was a bit of an “old horse”. Without knowing what digital pedagogy entails and the important fact that it isn’t just a tool used to make lessons more interesting or to replace teachers but it is a scholarship itself (as mentioned in DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 1: BEYOND THE LMS). 

Preparing for glaskas brought a new perspective of using digital pedagogy to improve my lessons, having an introduction using a short video clip or having a quiz to test the learner’s prior knowledge is so much more useful than written tests. I mentioned in my previous blog that you memory improves when you write, but that does not relate to testing prior knowledge, which is a crucial part of a well-planned lesson.

I agree that the LMS is simply premature, but like anything new, it must get accustomed to. While it will encourage easy teaching and learning at home, the interaction between teacher and learner will be lost, which also plays an important role in dynamic teaching and learning.

In DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 1: BEYOND THE LMS, it is mentioned that for the digital pedagogue, teaching begins with inquiry, that is such an important statement that shouldn’t only be applied to the digital pedagogues, but for all teachers in general. To improve a learner’s knowledge, you must first know what his pre-knowledge of the certain subject entails.

Reading DECODING DIGITAL PEDAGOGY, PT. 2: (UN)MAPPING THE TERRAIN, it becomes more clear to me that digital pedagogy is not a robot that would take over the teacher’s place in the classroom, but we should rather see it as a tool to improve the quality of work the teacher delivers, to expand the attention span of the learner and to all in all engage the teacher and learner in critical and analytic discussions in a creative and innovative way using the “electronic elements” that are available.

Thus, humbled by these two articles, I must contradict my previous blog post, and say, digital pedagogy is the way of the future. We as educators should use all tools and elements available to us, to enrich the minds of our learners, to improve the quality of education and teach our learners to not jump to conclusions (like I did) when you have minimum knowledge of the subject (again, I’m sorry). 

Our learners are our future and digital pedagogy is paving the path to the future. It’s time to jump on the bandwagon and be on our merry way to a better and more sustainable education system.

Going back to the basics.

While I acknowledge the significant impact technology has, not only in schools and education but the whole world seems to rely on the ever changing and improving systematic organisation technology has to offer. I still believe that “going back to the basics” is the key to a successful and empowering teaching and learning experience for both teacher and learner.

What I mean by going back to the basics is that we, as teachers, do not have to rely on technology, as it can, like any other human invention, fail. We need to look beyond the computer screens and see the blackboard and chalk. Digital pedagogy refers to “digits”, hands, fingers and thus using your hands and enabling students to write on the board, on paper or in notebooks would be sufficient and also excel the learning process. By making this statement, I’m referring to an article written by Lizette Borreli, which states that using pen and paper, not laptops, to take notes boosts memory and the ability to retain and understand concepts (http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-using-pen-and-paper-not-laptops-boosts-memory-writing-notes-helps-recall-concepts-ability-268770). Your brain remembers your unique writing technique, which help retain the information that is being written down.

Creativity is also a major part in the writing process, as I refer to sir Ken Robinson, which said that creativity and adaptability has a huge influence on our economy, thus we as teachers must create, creative and open minded learners, which will be set free in to an economic driven world.

As mentioned previously, “digital” refers to using your hands, cultivating creative students by letting them put down the smart phones and tablets, to use their, now free hands, to create a model, form art, paint a picture or draw anything related to the subject specifically. This will also enhance the learning process and will keep the learners interested.

I repeat, I’m not disregarding the huge impact technology has on our past, present and future, I’m simply stating that, us as educators, should not rely wholeheartedly on technology itself and rather use it as a crutch to ease our learning journey, but not to lead it. Using all our resources efficiently will result in creating a more efficient learning environment for our learners.  In the end, that is all that we want to achieve.