In 2013, I dove headfirst into the world of Twitter. First, I used it primarily for professional learning, lurking on Twitter chats, collecting resources, and doing research. Very soon I began to participate, sharing what I was doing and openly accepting suggestions from others on how to improve or which tools to use over several subject areas. The learning curve was extensive and steep at first, but eventually became comfortable. In my case, Bates (2014) was absolutely dead on in his assessment that professional learning through social media promotes global collaboration, digital literacy, networking, and individually-driven learning.
In contrast, November (2012) misses a crucial part of what kept me coming back to professional use of social media: relationships. It was the people that I was following and who took the time to support me that were the most important part of my experience. I began filtering professional knowledge in my brain in a different way than before: it wasn’t what I knew, but what the people I followed knew. For example, I know to turn to Alice Keeler for information about Google Tools or to Gallit Zvi and Joy Kirr when I’m thinking about Genius Hour. There are countless other human resources in my PLN who have specialities that are ready and waiting to be tapped into. I even made this video in my first MET course for a project on Twitter – it outlines the stages of using Twitter for professional development
Following this pattern of my own steep professional growth, I wanted to lead my students through a similar experience of discovery and learning with social media. I set up a class Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Remind accounts under the name @EduMinions (our class theme). We set up Mystery Skypes with other classes around the globe, participated in global projects such as Global Read Aloud, and shared daily student work to hashtags like #mathphotoaday. My students also temporarily worked on a project on Twitter called #grammar911 where they could compose and edit each other’s grammar including capitalization, organization, punctuation, and spelling. Social media became a digital gallery walk or an announcement spot for fun news as we shared to the common hashtag #eduminions. There were many ways that we used social media as an exploratory tool that helped us to connect further with each other, families at home, and with other global classrooms.
Students began to learn the pros and cons of each tool, what they were used best for, and who should be using them (adult vs student). We worked through digital citizenship curriculum (which was also glossed over in November’s (2012) article but briefly nodded to in Bates’ (2014)). Students began to see that global connections were possible and began asking questions about other cultures, regions, or languages. Sometimes this led to self-directed or guided inquiry opportunities depending on class interest. An understanding of audience was also gained by students. They were very aware that people would see their posts and worked hard to perfect their work; perhaps even more so than if it had been just me reviewing it.
Courses do not necessarily need to be re-designed to fit around social media, but instructors certainly need to know the affordances of social media before attempting to harness them for use in a classroom space. Because there are so many types of social media, it’s a bit of a tall order to ask teachers to understand the affordances and constraints of them all. However, the primary audience needs to be considered – are you doing this for the students to see/experience? Or for a parent community? Or to connect with global classrooms? Each of these scenarios may call for a different tool with a different set of affordances. If you pick the wrong tool for the job, re-design may be necessary then. Time needs to be integrated in class to read, interact, and reply to these posts as well.
References
Bates, T. (2014). Pedagogical differences between media: Social media. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/9-5-5-social-media/ (Chapter 7, point 6)
November, A. (2012). How Twitter can be used as a powerful educational tool. November Learning [Weblog] Retrieved from http://novemberlearning.com/educational-resources-for-educators/teaching-and-learning-articles/how-twitter-can-be-used-as-a-powerful-educational-tool/