Can social media be used effectively in the classroom? If so, how? At what ages? And, with what tools?
To be completely honest, I have been one of those teachers who have feared social media in the classroom because of all the reasons many other professionals have...fear of cyberbullying, fear of shattered confidences because of the negativity and crippling effects from other people's opinions, and fear of too much screen time. However, I am seeing the other side. I do believe social media can be used effectively in the classroom. First of all, it begins with education. We are teachers and it is our job to teach. Social media is "real" for our students. They are growing up in a world that revolves around the internet and social media. We teach our students how to get along with others on the playground, in our classrooms, in their homes and out in the real world through Social Emotional Learning programs, so why wouldn't we teach our students how to behave properly and get along online? It seems to me that we would be neglecting our responsibility as educators if we do. The article published in Edutopia, titled Making the Case for Social Media in Schools states, "We need to stop talking cyberbullying and start talking cybercitizenship" (@benpaddlejones). If we teach students how to act properly and model how to use social media in a positive way then we are teaching them how to be responsible doing something that we know they will do without our lessons, anyway. Also, we can address any mistakes they may make. "Every mistake and misstep in social media is a brilliant learning opportunity for all involved" says Ben Paddle Jones (Edutopia). However, before we initiate teaching lessons in/with social media in our classrooms, we need to have our school district create guidelines. We know social media should be modeled and taught to our students for more positive results for our students' futures. Therefor a team needs to be put in place, and approved by the school district board, to create guidelines for teachers, students and parents. Our current NVUSD Social Media Release is not a social media guideline. It only covers the release of students' pictures, published work, video's, interviews, and subject of new stories. It gives parents the right to withhold their child from participating in the aforementioned mediums. How do we go about creating this team to move forward with guidelines so we can properly teach our students how to be responsible on social media? Now that we are in a distance learning situation due to COVID-19, we need a "board approved" social media plan more than ever. I believe a silver lining from our distance learning experience is the acceptance of how social media plays a positive and an important role in our lives. It is the way of the 21st century. I never thought that I would be teaching using the Google Classroom platform, while using a number of engaging applications or webpages. This is all new for me but I like it. I find my students more engaged, more creative, and more responsive. Please remember that I teach 3rd graders (8 and 9 year olds). If they are showing improvements and more engagement, I can only imagine what is happening for students in older grade levels. I always thought age 11 was an appropriate age for my personal children to have more freedom with the internet. However, after teaching 8 and 9 year olds how to use the internet for good, rather than them learning it on their own for bad, I feel we should be educating students at a younger age. We need to catch them young and teach them sooner rather than later. It is much harder to change and correct a behavior after the fact than it is to teach them the right way of doing it from the beginning. According to the article by eschoolnews, titled, 10 Ways Schools are Using Social Media Effectively, smart phones should be used in the classroom. They also go on to state that social media can enhance professional development, can give feedback and initiate stimulating conversations. In addition, you can use free websites, like schoology.com to create private social networking which is focused around your curriculum. Social media platforms can reduce language barriers for some of our families and increase parent communication. Districts can use security programs like Gaggle.net. This medium allows students to learn how to use social media in a professional manner. Social media posts follow you and can haunt you forever, if they are not positive and created responsibly. College recruiters, employment offices and others will search for you on the internet and it can be detrimental if posts are not managed properly. As educators we need to teach our students how to use their creativity to create positive opportunities for a successful future. Gaggle.net has filters in place, uses cloud-based programs, and allows for files to be uploaded to a digital locker. In conclusion, I am completely on board with teaching social media in our classrooms. I am the BEST team lead (PBIS) at our site, and I believe teaching students to be responsible online is equally as important to teaching them to be responsible on the playground. Who else is going to teach them these important lessons? Isn't that part of our job as educators?
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As I read through our two articles and listened to the video, I was thinking about how I could apply Personalized Learning and Competency-Based Learning into my curriculum-based lessons. Then it dawned on me that I already do an abbreviated form of it.
I have used Benchmark Advance to formally assess my students and gather information on their individual needs. Once I have my data, I group kids into small groups. All students are assigned an independent reading book. They are to read the book on their own for the first read. Then, they partner with another student to read it a second time. For their last read, they are to read it together in their small group. Once they have read the story 3 times, they have text-dependent questions to answer. I usually have them answer the questions on their own in their writing journal but occasionally, I allow them choice to work with a partner. While some groups are doing their independent work, I pull students individually and/or in their small groups to listen to them read, go over any questions or concerns they may have with their text-dependent questions, and or move them along to a new story. Eventually, we have another assessment, and the mapping starts all over. Another way, I practice PL or CBL, is through a program called Dreambox. Dreambox is an online, interactive math program. It is individualized and tailored to the students' needs. It allows the student to go at their own pace for learning. I am able to check their data and see how efficiently and effectively they are working. Currently, due to online learning, I am using this program in their asynchronous time. Lastly, I have started a new program this year with online learning, called "Quill". Quill is an independent, online program that assesses each student with their grammar. First they take a starter diagnostic test to see where they will begin on their "map" . Next, I assign lessons to support their individual needs. Currently, this assignment is also given during their asynchronous time. However, if we were in the classroom, it would during our "centers" time. As I was reading and listening to our assignments this week, PL and CBL reminded me a lot of what we call centers. During a "typical" year, I would have centers for students to own their learning. Agency, ownership, choice, voice and inquiry are all important learning components. The more "buy in" and the better connection you have with your students, the greater the outcome at the end of the year. Blog #2: Distance Learning Tools Review
As I was pushed into the new experience of online learning last March, I had no idea how much I was going to learn in such a short amount of time. I knew how to use google docs, google drive, shared drives and all that, but I was not using or creating google slides, Pear Deck, Google Classroom, Clever or any of the amazing app’s that I have come to know. WOW! There is a wealth of opportunities and creativities out there on the internet. It is quite over stimulating and overwhelming for me but I have jumped on the train, and I am moving forward. This past week, I have glanced at a few different new app’s. I teach 3rd grade, so some of the app’s, or “tools” are not as user friendly as others for my third graders (and for me, in fact). However, the one that I really found fun and successful for my students was “Quill”. My daughter, Brooklynn, is a 6th grader at River Middle School and they use this tool with Language Arts. She recommended that I look into it because she is learning a lot to support her sentence structure and grammar, and she enjoys doing it. That’s the “catch” for me. I need a “tool” that supports my students’ education AND is fun for them to do. Otherwise, asynchronous work does not get done. Quill is user friendly. It was easy to find on Clever and download to my page. It was simple to set up my class and assign a “premade” lesson for them to work on. The first assignment I assigned was a “Starter Diagnostic’s”. After they are finished, the program examines their results. Now, if I paid for the program, I would get a lot more information but I am not willing to pay for it just yet. However, the information that they give you for free is pretty darn great. For example, this diagnostic’s test documented percentages for me of how each student performed with knowledge in the following areas: capitalization, plural and possessive nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, commas, prepositions, and adverbs. All you have to do is click the students’ name and their individual information comes up. It shows you the details of how they performed and breaks down the concept by each question. It allows me to “see” their thinking. My classroom consists of 90% of students who are English Language Learners. Therefore, “seeing” how they completed their sentences (fill in the blank questions) gives me insight into their speaking skills, also. For example, one of the sentences they had to complete was: Directions: Fill in the blank with one of the words (on, in, at, to) New Years’ day is a holiday _____ January. My student used “to”. So, this tells me he most likely does not know his months and holidays and/or he is troubled with prepositions. It should be “in” because it is relating to time. Another feature that I appreciate is it includes the standards for each task (assignment). Our school is moving toward published target standards and daily learning expectations for our students. I appreciate the standards being included for a couple reasons. One, it simply makes my life easier for my target standards, and two, I know that the assignment is relevant and worthwhile. I highly recommend looking into this program, if you haven’t already. After exploring the resources from Common Sense and KQED, I feel digital literacy and equity are a challenging pair for most communities. We are fortunate to live in a wealthy area where the school district has provided our students with either a chromebook or an ipad, along with a hotspot, if needed. That is not always the case. Let’s just speak about equity for a moment. Equity is defined as “the quality of being fair and impartial” (Google). It also means that different people have different needs of support and help. This means that each child should be treated exactly the same, no matter of race, gender, income status, knowledge, family or age. It also should not matter where you live, but it does. Certain counties within our state do not have the “funds” to provide their students with a device, let alone a hotspot. Also, several counties within our state are rural and do not have internet accessibility. I was born and raised in the Napa Valley but for a short time I lived in Red Bluff, CA. Red Bluff is a rural town just north of a town called Arbuckle. In Arbuckle, there is a 3rd grade teacher, Alena Anberg who personally delivered wifi hotspots, laptops and ipads to students. She realized that even before CoronaVirus the lack of cell service in the area was a problem. See, she lives in a rural area, like Red Bluff. In an article titled, “Closing California’s Digital Divide: One Rural Teacher’s Fight to Get Her Students Connected” she states, “In super rural places that don’t have any kind of cell towers, they’re really without a solution” (McEvoy, Julia, KQED). Not only does the town have a lack of cell towers but their kids did not know how to use the tools once they received them. Anberg states, “My third graders are 8 year olds and they’re being held back academically by not having access” (McEvoy, Julia, KQED). Anberg has gone on to map her town of who has the internet and who doesn’t. She is on a mission to receive donations of hotspots so her school district children can have wifi in their homes in order to attend school.
In another article by KQED, titled, “From Teaching to Tech Support: Helping Oakland Students Through IT Woes”, an OUSD Chief Systems and Services Officer Preston Thomas states, “Across Oakland Unified, of nearly 25,000 students surveyed, over 19,000 don’t have access to a computer without district help” (Rancano, Vanessa, KQED). Since the spring of 2020, Oakland Unified School District has loaned out 23,000 chromebooks and 5,000 hotspot devices that have wifi. Yet, we still have a problem. Just as with Arbuckle, OUSD has high school students who now have a device but don’t know how to use it. This is not equity. Therefore equity is two-fold in these situations. On one hand, we have an equity issue of getting the devices and wifi into our students’ hands. On the other hand, we have an equity issue because our students don’t know how to use the device. So, it comes down to the school district and the classroom teachers working together. I teach third grade at Snow Elementary School in Napa, CA. As I mentioned earlier, we are fortunate to live in a wealthy district. It is a district that has provided all of our students with a device and a wifi hotspot, if necessary. However, that does not solve the problem of whether or not a student knows how to use the device. Most of my current students used an ipad in the past (typically a K-2 device). At the 3rd grade level, we introduce chromebooks into their world. As we know they are two different pieces of technology. Therefore, the district has done its part to provide the equipment and now the classroom teacher is left to teaching the digital literacy component. Boy can it be a challenge, especially at the beginning of the year. And I don’t just mean challenging for the students. You have to remember that we teachers all come with a different level of comfort and expertise of the digital world. In an article by Common Sense, titled, “Social and Cultural Literacy Resources for Classrooms: A best-of-the-best collection of resources for social justice-and equity-focused educators”, it states, “Each of us -- teachers and students alike -- enter classrooms from different perspectives and points of view. We must learn to negotiate those differences to better understand each other and our worlds, and to advocate for a better, more equitable future” (1/10/20). You can only teach what you know. Therefore, if certain teachers are not open-minded to learn new things about the world of technology then students are not receiving the benefits that other students may be receiving. This too, is not equity! I have been teaching digital literacy with an equity focus by using our adopted curriculum and embedding documents, websites, applications, and slide decks. I am teaching all of the students how to access and use these resources. We are all learning as we go. I have started small, and I am gradually branching out by adding more options for my students. Just this week, we learned about Quill. Quill is a program to help teach grammar and sentence structure. Thankfully the kids love it. In addition, I am excited to announce that I have created my first Hyperdocs lesson to introduce our upcoming Language Arts book on Adaptations. The Hyperdocs lesson includes the catorgories: Engage, Explore, Explain, Apply, Share, Reflect. I didn't care for the fact that Explore was introduced before Explain, so I switched those two areas to be Explain and then Explore. I am excited to teach this lesson in the near future. Here is my lesson that I think my students will love: docs.google.com/document/d/1XFmDyaS2nKMhfHM27MEGNxGBRQR_7V9L5S2mefO_HLY/edit?usp=sharing That is the best thing about teaching online, the students love having the devices in their homes (when most likely they wouldn’t have them without the district's help and distant learning). They also love learning new things. All of a sudden, “school work” is not “school work” anymore. They enjoy it online. They love using the app’s and they can move along at their own pace. This is also an equity issue. So many times, we move along at an accelerated pace, through our worksheets and kids get lost in the busywork. An online structure is much more tailored to the individual. I have a feeling that there will always be equity concerns in all areas of our life. What we do about those concerns makes all the difference! |
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December 2020
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