Using Social Media in the Classroom-Facebook and Pinterest

I have a lot of experience using Facebook. I remember when Facebook first came out. It's interesting to consider that it came out maybe not so much as an educational tool, but it was targeted to college students to help them make connections. It was how I got in contact with my first college roommate, and how I contacted my classmates to make study plans. So I guess it should come as no surprise to me now that Facebook could play an integral role in Education.

I have reviewed many resources this week for using Facebook for educational purposes. I really had no idea that you could use Facebook to essentially create a feed for pages all focused around one topic. You can do that by searching interests, following pages, and then adding them to favorites. To me this just sounds like a more focused Twitter feed. Instead of all 44 people I follow, I'm looking at 4 pages over one topic (like Educational Technology). I like the idea of a less clunky Twitter feed, and I like that it's on a network I already use so often.  For more information on searching Interests, see the video above (thanks Dr. Dell). I've learned this week that social networks are an excellent resource for finding resources for teaching diverse learners. For example, I can search interests for "gifted learners" and many pages are brought up that have teaching strategies for educating gifted students. Using a specific search helps you focus in on what type of diverse learner you want to reach. I searched a few different keywords including: ADHD, English language learners, and autism and found pages for each.
I searched for resources of my own and found two articles that were particularly interesting. The first one focuses on the pedagogical benefits of using social networking. I liked this article because I want to know that if I incorporate Facebook into class time, that it is serving a purpose. The article cited evidence that social networks benefit student learning. I'm a science teacher, so I can appreciate some data to back up claims. The second article is a list of ways to use Facebook for education. I really like their idea of using Facebook for research. The rationale is that students are not just relying on wikipedia but are searching for groups or professionals who are experts on the topic of research. I like this idea, but I'm also curious how students would carry out that process. They could begin by finding pages, but finding a specific expert may prove tricky.
My main concern with the use of Facebook is the stigma behind it. My Facebook is a personal page. I did not set it up with education in mind. It's still frowned upon to friend students even if they have graduated because it can be deemed inappropriate. Right now, I do not friend any current students. When asked why, I tell them because it's illegal, and to be honest, I'm pretty sure I was told that once. I looked it up. In Missouri, that law was overturned. But even if it is legal, I am not sure I would have the administrative support I would need to justify using Facebook in class. In "Web 2.0: How-To For Educators", the authors mentioned Ning. Ning as I understand it, is a way to create your own social network. I wonder if a network firmly established for education would allow me to get the support I need? There has been a shift to create learning management systems that model social network sites, and I don't think that is a coincidence. Take Schoology, for example. It has an uncanny resemblance to Facebook. If I can't use Facebook, then I should make myself aware of the applications of Schoology that mimic Facebook so that my students still benefit.

I am also very familiar with Pinterest, and I have definitely used Pinterest for educational purposes before. I really like the organizational application of Pinterest. I have boards for science lesson plans, working out, cooking, etc. and it's a very easy way to keep track of new resources. I like the idea of starting an education Pinterest, and creating a board for each unit. I also like the idea of students doing that themselves. This article talks about several different ideas for using Pinterest in education. It definitely would be a great way to collaborate with other teachers if we needed to create a new unit. I also like the idea of sharing my educational Pinterest with students to give them access to more resources. I actually have a real-life Pinterest board in my classroom where I pin up bad science puns, cool articles, and other random Biology things. It's designed to look like the website. It's a lot more filled up now.


Pinterest is also a good way to find resources for teaching. I have found many activities and labs on Pinterest. The ability to search Pinterest also lets you find specific content. If you search for teaching ESL students or teaching students with reading disabilities, you are instantly able to access different lesson plans and strategies for working with those students.

I gotta admit, I really didn't think there were many educational applications for social networks sites like Facebook and Pinterest that seem so very personal, but I realize now that we can create accounts that are focused solely education and have access to a ton of resources.

I really liked this quote from an educator in the reading this week, "'Technology allows us to access knowledge like never before-the library doors are wide open and so many can enter'" (Solomon & Schrum, 2014, p.125). Students are already familiar with social networking, but what they may fail to see is that they have their education at their fingertips.

References 

 Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators (2nd ed.). ISTE. 

A Networked Science Classroom?

This week I've hit a wall on PLNs. I don't know if I'm tired or starting to get overwhelmed with all of the information, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting excited about the idea of a networked classroom. As I'm proofreading this, I noticed that the first part of this blog is a little negative... sorry.

I think from the perspective of an English or History or Elementary teacher, networked classrooms sound like a lot of fun. Chapter 3 gave lots of examples of teachers who were excelling at creating networked classrooms, but they were all either History or English. What I'm frustrated with is that they seem to lend themselves to subjects whose focus is on flexible ideas and not so much the sort of factual information or traditional science practices I work with on a daily basis. For example, one of our very first units is on Cells... I don't see a whole lot of blogging, Skyping, etc. going on over the golgi apparatus.
The chapter also started off with the section titled "What Changes," and said that the change starts with us. I'm going to be honest in saying that, I don't know if I want to be the type of teacher that they described. I think this is another instance where subjects that focus on flexible ideas have a one up, but the book described finding other resources, educators, experts to teach the content, and even to collaborate with them. I think this is appropriate in an English classroom for sure. But is this really appropriate for Science? What I'm picturing may not be what the authors had in mind, but essentially I would find resources from other educators and experts to help them learn the content or they would find it. I feel like this is a lazy approach on my part to just let the students teach themselves. What I am there for then? To teach them to teach themselves is not what I had envisioned for my career as a teacher. I love Biology, I want to teach them Biology. I want to go find the resources that will enhance the curriculum and then present it to them in the classroom (in various ways) because that's my job: to be an expert in the content. I think I still feel most comfortable as the "sage on the stage," but I do see the value in teaching students how to gather resources, I would just prefer that I've done my part first.

There is a paragraph in that first section that talks about the culture changing in a networked classroom. In this culture, "teachers and students become co-learners as well as co-teachers" (Richardson &Mancabelli, 2011, p.61) and the process of gathering information described is kind of intriguing. It describes students as "scribes" that gather resources, and information and organize it on a blog so that essentially the blog becomes a substitute for a textbook. I think I could work with this idea in the Science classroom. I think this could easily become an assignment where students are required to create a "study blog" for the unit that includes resources and information that would be beneficial for them for upcoming unit tests. I am already planning on having a Twitter assignment in my classroom where they find information relevant to each unit and tweet about what they've found. I think this could be a good way to bring all that information together while allowing me to learn more from what they've gathered and them to learn more from each other as well.

The book presented seven different characteristics of networked classrooms, and I think these really serve to help you move up in the SAMR model. They are using technology to work collaboratively and create and share in ways that are innovative instead of just replacing paper with a keyboard. The characteristics were mostly things I'd heard before when discussing using technology in the classroom except for the last characteristic. I think the last characteristic of having authentic assessment is another area that I find to be a struggle. They talk about how "students are doing real work for real purposes for real audiences" (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p.63). That statement kind of offended me a little. In the science field, getting down the factual information is not pointless. If you want to advance, then you have to have that background. And if I want my students to succeed on their EOC, we've got to get down the factual information. But I guess it does make sense when you think about how only maybe 25% of your students are going to continue using this information. There are lots of real problems to be tackled in the field of science, and I want my students to be able to do that. I want them to be able to be networked with other classrooms while we tackle a global water crisis or something similar. What I need is more time. I think a lot of my frustration from this chapter is that these projects sound amazing, but they would be a little more challenging to work into science, and the time is not there, at least not yet.

I really like these authors in that they try to make sure your fears are alleviated at the end of each chapter. They reminded us to start with ourselves, start small, realize we might fail, show the kids how to do this, and remember the goal (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011). Despite all my negative thoughts toward this chapter, these reminders do help. I don't have to build Rome in a day, and I'll probably screw up some buildings along the way, but it's alright.

So, to end on a positive note, here's what I'm thinking as far as what transitioning to a networked classroom will look like for me. I think I'm going to start with the Twitter project where kids are gathering resources and tweeting on each unit. At least once, I'll have them create a study blog where they gather resources to help prepare them for the unit exam, and maybe just maybe by the end of the year, we can tackle a real problem and network with other classrooms. (The end of the year is really the only time available at least as I'm starting out and getting the hang of networking) .

The following is are some resources I looked over that would guide students in using Twitter. This first one talks about ways to use Twitter for research. There is a way that an alert (called a Twilert) can be placed on their phones to update them when specific keywords are used!The second article talks about the power of a hashtag.  I would use a hashtag to help organize their resources that they post (especially for grading purposes).

References

 Richardson, W., & Mancabelli, R. (2011). Personal learning networks: Using the power of   connections to transform education. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. 

Learning How to Tweet and Other Twitter Adventures!

Okay, so this week has been full of technology for me. To be honest, a lot of that has been Pokemon Go. However, the timing for setting up a Twitter account could not have been more perfect in that respect. I promise I haven't just been using Twitter to brush up my Pokemon skills, but I can't lie and say I haven't searched for accounts to follow. (If any of you are playing, I would follow PokemonGoHub). If you're not playing, I recommend it. Your students probably will still be playing in August! It's a great way to get out of the house, exercise, and make new friends (even if we're all a little nerdy).
When I first created my Twitter account, I started searching for Science feeds to follow. I am most excited to create a PLN in general so that I can be up to date with what new research has emerged in Biology, and there are tons of Twitter feeds devoted to research and discoveries in the field. These two sites gave me some pretty good feeds to follow:
Buzzfeed's List for Science Nerds
More Science Related Feeds
I spent a lot of time just researching science feeds to follow. Those were pretty easy to find, and I found I could follow lots of people and organizations that I wanted to hear from. In the reading, the authors mentioned a technology coordinator who loved Twitter because he could get advice and information from people whose feedback he valued (Solomon & Schrum, 2014); I get that sentiment. The neat thing about Twitter is that you can be very focused on what kind of information you are exposed to so you're not bombarded with information you don't care to hear.  I liked that I could quickly find and have access to current ideas and research in Biology. And I'm not just getting to hear from organizations, but I realized yesterday that a lady I followed because she tweeted about modern extinction was actually the author of a book I'd read on the topic. (How cool is that? Yes, I did search for J.K. Rowling next).
However, it has been really difficult for me to break into the educational side of Twitter. I took a look at the wiki Twitter4Teachers, and there are a ton of user accounts to sort through. They even have a short description of each user. But, it's still just way overwhelming for me. I have followed many people from the field of Education, but I find that I'm pickier when looking for educational information. For instance, there are lots of elementary twitter users for science (which is awesome if you teach elementary!), but I want to make sure to find feeds that can help enhance my classroom, so those aren't really appropriate for me. I found some cool feeds to follow from EducationWorld and tried to focus my searches more towards science teacher feeds or educational technology feeds.
So finding people to follow has been a lot of fun and sometimes frustrating, but actually beginning to use Twitter has also been an experience.
The reading gave some good general information on how to make this process go more smoothly. I've been pretty okay with the idea of re-tweeting, but less okay with coming up with my own original tweets. I know that the tweets should be adding value, so the first tweet I did (besides the welcome) was my source for finding education feeds to follow. I was able to use TinyUrl to shorten my url, and include the class hashtag.
Hashtags are really very cool. It helps to streamline all the information for a topic, and then we can even use that hashtag to have a chat. I also liked in the reading that it emphasized that a hashtag on twitter creates a pretty powerful search engine because you can be very specific (as long as the hashtag already exists). I just quickly searched #blacklivesmatter just to see what Twitter pulled up. I think a search like this could be awesome in a History classroom. The BLM movement is at the forefront of news today, so I think students could benefit by quickly seeing updated news and the various opinions that exists out there.I think, in the future, I will be searching using hashtags to follow more educators who are posting about the things I want more information on.
The last component of Twitter I explored was TweetDeck. I don't really understand TweetDeck. I remember being really excited about reading about it last week because it sounded like it would really revolutionize the organization of my tweets, but so far it just looks like a different way to view notifications. I guess if I had another Twitter account, it would help me view the two at the same time? The only other application I've found so far that I appreciate is that I can filter the columns. I like that because I can create a column for feeds I want to see exclusively and then view multiple feeds side by side.
I did find this resource for help with TweetDeck. It's just the Twitter Support site, but it walks you through how to make changes to your TweetDeck.
Well, I gotta go "catch 'em all!", but if you want to follow me on Twitter my username is aprilmurdock00.

References

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (n.d.). Web 2.0 how-to for educators (2nd ed.).

Defining and Exploring Personal Learning Networks

*I really struggled at first with not making this sound like an academic paper, so I decided to just let all my natural sarcasm run free because one of the things I learned this week is that we should be human in our blogs! That being said, I hope it doesn’t read as being negative or snide*

     This week, I started my quest to discover the sheer magic that is a personal learning network.  Okay, so far they are only slightly magical, but I’ve only learned a little, and I am excited to explore the possibilities of using these in my classroom and as a lifelong learner. If you’re reading this, you are probably my classmate or teacher, so I am not going to bore you with reiterating exactly everything I read (because you did too!). There were a lot of things about what I read that stood out and helped alleviate some fears I have about personal learning networks.

     First, the authors, Richardson and Mancabelli, really had to sell us on the idea of personal learning networks. The introduction was basically all about why we should be so excited to use them. They made some very good points. First, we all know that information has become more and more digital. We are no longer relying on a physical textbook to prepare for our classes. This alone has started to change the way we teach, but the authors argue that this is also affecting the way we learn. As educators, much like the producers of newspapers mentioned by the authors in the book, we tend to try to adapt the internet to us, but using a personal learning network should not just reform education for us, but transform it (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011). We can’t just rely on the same old tricks because society no longer limits themselves to just what’s in a textbook whether it’s physical or digital. I’ll admit that when I first started hearing about using technology in the classroom, I just pictured transferring all of the physical worksheets, activities, etc. that I have onto an online LMS (such as Schoology), and that would somehow placate the technology gods. What the authors are arguing for is not just learning online, but learning through connections we can make with other educators, students, experts, etc. It’s not so much about moving our resources, as it is about discovering all the knowledge that is available elsewhere.

     I think so far, I’ve focused only on the consumer side of PLNs. One of the anxieties I have about PLNs is the feeling that I am probably lightyears behind my students in knowing how to use them. I know this is definitely true concerning the use of Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. The authors also did a good job in the introduction of addressing that concern. Students are very well adept at using social networks, but they are probably not so strong at using them for academic purposes. They are “technological consumers but not necessarily creators” (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p.7). This helped me realize that even though they know generally how to use social networks, we are starting at the same place as far as how to use them for learning. We all have probably so far only been consumers, and now we get to explore the other side to PLNs: creation.

     The last thing in the introduction that really stood out to me was the authors admitting that using a PLN for the first time is both an emotional and cognitive process (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011). We have to be willing to create and add value within our personal learning networks for them to be really effective. This is another of my anxieties with using them. You have to put yourself out there (like in this blog) and that is a little intimidating. While dealing with the emotions of having your ideas on the web, you also get to experience the cognitive side of PLNs, which is organizing all the information that you will be receiving on a daily basis. The authors do a good job of addressing these concerns in Chapter 2, and I’ll come back to that.  Did the introduction sell me on PLNs? Yes and no. Yes, they definitely made a good case for why we should be using. But no, I wasn’t super excited about putting myself out there.

     The first chapter was more specific about the benefits of using PLNs. There was one section that I really liked and it was titled “Network Effects”. It could’ve been titled “PLNs will help you look awesome while being observed” because that is what I got out of this section (this is what happens when you’re an anxiety ridden teacher just starting out). The authors outlined seven traits of schools that used global learning networks. The first one that stood out was “Students are better prepared for life and work in the 21^st century” (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p.27). One of my focuses as a teacher is making what I do relevant to my students. Making connections through PLNs is relevant to their future careers. The ability to network is a huge asset in college and future careers. I also really liked #4, “Instruction is more individualized” (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p.27). I don’t know how the rest of you feel about this, but as a high school teacher, I struggle with individualized instruction. Yes, I do my best to meet the needs of my students, but can I really make it authentically individualized? I don’t really think so. With a PLN, however, students are gaining the knowledge to pull the resources that are going to best help them. I have to teach them how, but ultimately they are getting exactly what they need!

     I feel like this is getting really long, so I’ll wrap it up. Like I mentioned earlier, Chapter 2 did a really good job of alleviating my fears about starting to use a PLN. First of all, they walk you through how to get started using several different tools or social networks. But furthermore, they let you know how to manage those networks. For instance, TweetDeck manages groups of twitter users and then it also has a link shortening capability for when you want to tweet out a link and not use up all your characters. I really liked that the authors are trying to make this process as painless as possible. I also liked how the authors ended the chapter with a discussion overall of how to make your PLN experience worth it. The phrase “add value” really stuck with me as a reminder that I have to contribute resources and ideas if I want to start making meaningful connections.

     With that being said, one of my coworkers shared with me a really cool idea for using Instagram in the classroom. She called it an Instagram Challenge (which is apparently a real thing that teenagers already do). She said every day they had to take a photo of a certain chemical principle and add a caption stating how that photo demonstrated the principle. She said she used it at the end of the year to review (which honestly is probably how I would use it). A couple of things to consider though was that she said grading it was really hard (lots of photos from lots of students every day), and that each student had to create a school Instagram account (to avoid seeing anything we don’t want to see).  I, unfortunately, don’t have a link, just the general idea. But I thought I’d get started on “adding value”!
Here are some other ways to use Instagram in the classroom.
I also did a little research on using Twitter (because that is coming soon to my life)... here is a helpful handout I found on how to get started.

                                                                                                                                                               

References

Richardson, W., & Mancabelli, R. (2011). Personal learning networks: Using the power of connections to transform education. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.