Social Media

So... what exactly is social media? That is a good question. I would have thought it would be things like twitter, facebook, instagram and good ol' bebo! haha. But according to Google's dictionary it's any 'websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.' This means, that almost anything online that enables any type of social networking is 'social media'. I think that means then that even online notices about meetings could be termed 'social media'.

I had thought I didn't really use social media much and was a bit of a techno-phobe because we haven't tweeted, or facebooked, or instagrammed in our classes at all. However, maybe I need to rethink and affirm all that we do do to engage with the world in my class/professional development.

In my class, we use some types of social media. All students have gmail addresses, and manage their learning on google docs. There is often collaboration amongst learning tasks. They have blogs and post samples of their learning up on that platform. Families are invited to view and comment. We have begun to use a variety of apps and websites, such as padlet, podcasts, school portal, and youtube, screencastify etc.

I guess I worry about some apps as I wonder if they're really useful for building learning or whether what I think the children need would be better served by another app. Facebook does have some valuable features, as does twitter, however, I think that so far, we're able to meet the needs of our students through other apps. This is also because we're concerned about the risks of facebook, as we've not developed enough clarity around how we'd use these platforms safely. For example, we've shut down the 'hangouts' feature of google, as students weren't always using it solely for learning. Unkind words, and inappropriate comments made it not valuable enough to keep access to.  I guess, this will continue to be the major influence on how we engage with or not with what social media has to offer for our learners.


In terms of my own professional development, I use a small range of platforms. I am on facebook and follow a few pages, NZ teachers primary, learning through play, mindshift. These often have helpful and interesting posts that help keep me inspired for my teaching. I've been part of VLN's in the past, but I found them clunky and annoying and never beneficial in a way that outweighed the frustrations. I also am continuously using emails, google calendars and these are soo important professionally to keep on top of and to use to be in contact with what's happening. We've also done surveys through survey monkey and a variety of other things.

Sometimes, it feels like a million different ways to get hounded, or a million different things that I need to keep on top of, but when I'm trying to meet my needs, I'm really only limited by my imagination as to what I go looking for, because the answers are all out there for what I need to help myself improve.