Journal 3: The Case for Social Media in School

Resource: Kessler, Sarah. "The Case For Social Media in Schools." Mashable. N.p., 29 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://mashable.com/2010/09/29/social-media-in-school/>.

Instagram, Facebook, MySpace, AIM, and other forms of social media sites are becoming quite popular among our students in school.  It is very unlikely that a student has never heard of any of these social media sites, they know someone that has an account, or themselves has an active account.  With the popularity of these social media sites these sites won’t be going away anytime soon.  Kessler discuss in her article of teachers using social media in their classroom and are having students show tremendous success.  Kessler stated “schools are missing out on an opportunity to incorporate learning tools the students already know how to use”. 

In the article it discusses when students are engaged in using the social media site they had better learning outcome.  In Mr. Hardy a 3^rd/4^th grade teacher he would have his students write a blog as a way to motivate his student to write.  The students that were blogging saw the blogging process as I am not just writing an assignment; other people may see this as well, so I have to make sure I don’t make any grammatical errors, or make sure my writing makes sense which encourages the students to do well on their blogs.  Kessler mentions that social media encourages collaboration instead of cliques. “Students critique and comment on each other’s assignments, work in teams to create content, and can easily access each other and the teacher with questions or to start a discussion” (Kessler, 2010).  This allows the students to interact with each other by learning from one another, and providing immediate feedback on an assignment from their classmates.  The best way to ensure that the students are safe with using social media is to make sure that teachers and parents teach them the safety of using social media in order for them to have success.

Question 1: What social media sites are available for teachers to use for their students?

Safety and privacy of the student is the main concern when having students engage in social media sites for school purpose.  You want to stay away from social media sites that are block at school.  The reason why I say that is because you want your students to have access to the site at school and at home without having any difficulties.  Teachers can use Edmodo, Edublogs, and Kidblog, and teachers can design their own Haiku website for the students to use.

Question 2: Does our GED 512 class relate to this article of using social media?

Yes, when reading this article I thought of the many ways that Dr. McGarvey has interacted the class through social media.  He has set up his own website that has lectures, articles, and assignments for use to look over and do.  We have set an account through blogger.com, where we read each other blogs and make comments on them.  We have signed up for Affinity Group and Digg Stream to stay up dated with our currently interest in education.  Last week in class we answer questions to the PowerPoint lecture through our cell phone.  Lastly, we signed up for a Twitter account, and I am looking forward to see what Dr. McGarvey is going to make us do through Twitter.