The following is a list of Do’s and Don’t's teachers should consider when using social media within their classrooms.
Your students will be much willing (and excited) to participate in everyday classroom activities if they have a fun new way to do so. Students can start to develop their writing skills through blogging instead of using journals. To circumvent classroom shyness, open dialogue can be supplemented by discussions using Twitter hashtags. Teach students to work collaboratively through group work online –open forums are a great way to let them critique, comment, and connect with one another.
Teachers lead by example, so don’t be afraid to get yourself involved in social media. Create your own blog and update it regularly with class assignments, post discussion topics and have your students leave comments. Make a Twitter account and share interesting articles you come across, develop discussion topics for others to contribute to using hashtags, and constantly be updated on what’s going on around in the world. Use Facebook to create a class fan page or group and let that serve as an open forum for student collaboration.
There are just as many dangers online as there are offline, so you must be careful to monitor the language and conversations that are occurring. There are many free tools that allow teachers to control an online environment while still allowing kids to benefit from social media, such as kidblog.org, Edmodo and Edublogs. With a little supervision, online dangers can be minimized.
The Internet provides access to people around the world, which means that there are millions of other teachers and parents that you can connect with and share ideas. Social media allows you to network and build relationships with like-minded people who can help contribute to your knowledge.
As a teacher, you are viewed as a leader and role model for your students. You need to be careful to keep your personal and professional life separate, not crossing the line that separates using social media inappropriately for student-learning purposes. It is also extremely important to always make sure that the content posted will not lead to you or your students getting in trouble or casting a negative representation of your school establishment.
If you are engaging in social media, you should stay active and regularly maintain a constant stream of content. When you become inactive on social media, you can be either forgotten or viewed as irrelevant, which ultimately will lead to people not paying attention. Social media is about engaging your public, so work hard to keep them interested.
Social media sites can be extremely time-consuming, so know what your limits are before starting. Teaching, grading homework and tests, plus living your own personal life makes for a busy schedule. Add a bunch of social media sites to the mix and it’ll be amazing if you find time to sleep. Don’t take on more than you can handle. Start small and work your way up.
Don’t focus so much on implementing digital learning into the classroom that you forget the conventional teaching style. Instead, you should use traditional methods of teaching in collaboration with social media. It’s important to embrace these new technological developments but the old ways shouldn’t be forgotten.
I hope that these Do’s and Don’t's will help teachers implement social media into the classroom. If you have any more helpful advice, please share them in the comments section below!
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