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!