‘Using social and online networks in teaching and professional development’

I have to admit that I have never been a great fan of social media.  I have lost hours to mindless rubbish or side tracking away from what I was meant to be finding out.  Not to mention the number of people I know who seem to spend more time in a virtual world rather than a real one.  This is becoming a notable concern for young males as in the research by Zimbardo and Coulombe (2016) describes the huge number of males that are withdrawing from work, relationships and the real world into an alternative reality of little social challenge and responsibility. 

Should we be using Social media in our classrooms? I think that if you have identified a purpose for its use other than just for the sake of using social media then yes (New Zealand Teachers Council, 2012).  Teachers need to ensure that they are also teaching students to be safe and to be aware of how to do this. 

I don’t think I will be setting up a class social network page for my class just yet.  This is mostly because a number of the parents don’t have access to the internet anyway. I also want to be sure that I have the required skills in place to understand which site is best to use and how to keep the content private to only invited people.  I have a little more learning to do.

I think some sort of digital portfolio for students would be excellent.  My school currently has a printed portfolio.  It would be great to be able to encourage parents to share their child’s learning journey and to contribute comments regularly.  Perhaps a social media platform could be a good way of developing this.

I have used some social media sites for my own professional development.  I would mainly be what is referred to as a lurker.  I look for the content I need, read it, but don’t post comments or join discussions.  Often this is simply because the point I may have wanted to say has already been written by someone else, or it is a new area of interest to me and I don’t want to come across as stupid by stating the seemingly obvious to others or asking a ‘dumb question’.

I use social media as a professional development tool I for the same things as many other teachers; affirmation of my practice, new resources, and looking for others who are having similar experiences in the classroom and what they may have done about it (Melhuish, 2013).

Social media is free, fast and affords connection to people doing a similar type of teaching to me.  I teach young, non-verbal, special needs students in a satellite class at a mainstream school.  I have some amazing professional networks with teachers at the school, however, I find the specialist teaching techniques I need are often online with other specialist teachers, occupational therapists, speech language therapists and even child psychologists.  These people are often overseas so social media is one easy way to make contact or find information shared by them.  The use of the internet also means that this learning can happen any time.  I don’t need to book a course which is in school time, organise a reliever, or travel.

I have a long way to go to being an expert user of social media but I have definitely started the journey and it is exciting to see what positive directions it can be taken.

References:

Melhuish.K. (2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrived on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han.

New Zealand Teachers Council. (2012). Establishing safeguards (video file). Retrieved from

https://vimeo.com/49216520

Zimbardo, P., & Coulombe, N. D. (2016). Man Disconnected: How the digital age is changing young men forever (2^nd ed.). London: Penguin Random House.