Social Media: Sin or Salvation?

Social media! In classrooms! That has to be the most ridiculous thing ever to have been suggested. If you believe this statement then you should probably not even bother reading any further, unless you want a whole new world opened for you.

All over the world social media is a form a communication and carrying across information. Everyone thought the world became small when air travel across continents became an everyday thing...but with social media the world is even smaller now.

There is no need to be concerned about students being on facebook/twitter during class time if cell phones are allowed, as many of them are anyway on some sort of social media during class time. Not necessarily in all schools or universities but generally people are busy with some sort of electronic device all the time.

For an education system to really work and be effective we (as teachers) need to be able to connect with the learners and teach them in a way they can relate to. I like technology and I enjoy using various social Medias to watch videos, read the news, and catch up on sport, weather, and other people’s news and life events. So next year (2017) I am planning on teaching which means that I will not be a lot older than the majority of the learners that I will teach. This then makes sense that I and the learners will both enjoy using social media in class so it would probably be a good idea to using social media to ensure the best pedagogical experience.

My specialisation subjects are Natural Sciences and Life Sciences. Science is an ever-changing field and therefore one needs to be careful of stagnating in it. In essence if you want to be successful science teacher you need to make the learners aware of changes occurring daily. An example of this could be the discovery of gravitational waves. This type of work will not be in the curriculum but by using technology (computers and the internet) it will be possible to show them on the news in class about the latest discoveries.

Another idea that could help learners in your class could be to set up a twitter account and then post information on twitter. For example what homework is due and when. By doing this the learners are able to engage with one another as well as with the teacher. If you are able to have more teachers at the school that are also interested in using technology and social media – one can tweet during class time to another class. If there are no facilities to tweet you could improvise by using stick notes and writing your tweets (answers) to a specific question on there. That could then be taken to the class next door and then the two classes can engage in that way.

In natural sciences when something like photosynthesis is discussed, YouTube videos can be shown of the different experiments regarding photosynthesis. I feel that this approach will keep learners interested and excited for coming to class and learning.

Google/twitter/YouTube/facebook is really wonderful things and if we as teachers make use of them so often, then learners should have the opportunity too. With all things in life there are limits and even although social media can be used for the wrong reasons – it is impossible to protect children forever from the outside world. Therefore the sooner they realize that there is more to internet and social media than what they know (in terms of engaging and learning) it will result in them using it more responsibly too.

I would definitely want to use different forms of teaching in my class as it is something I would have liked to have.