Activity 6-Week 30

Using social online networks in teaching and professional development 

Technology has moved from the good old chalk and blackboard to the use of white boards, to smart boards and projectors to computers. Technology is advancing at a rapid rate and as schools start to come to grips with the ever changing ways we do things within the classroom, we are always looking for new ideas to enhance the teaching and learning within our class. 

"In New Zealand and internationally there is widespread interest in the use of technologies to enhance learning in schools and the debate has extended to include the way educators also use technologies to support their own professional learning". Melhuish (2013). 

Some of the ways teachers are using technology is the use of social media, we know that the majority of our students have a social media account and access it everyday. Some of the reports I have written during my Mind-lab course have looked at the use of social media and whether it enhances teaching and learning. I haven't looked at whether it enhances professional development. However, since joining up on google + into the Mind-lab community, this has benefitted me, in that I can ask  or answer questions of people who are educators who understand and have knowledge of teaching. This type of social media has helped me with my professional development as previously I only had my colleagues to ask for feedback, now I have thousands of people who have the answers or have other ways to do the same thing.

For me social media was really used for personal use, and thats how I thought it was used for. Over the years I have been a teacher, I have started to use social media in my teaching, such as making a subject page and inviting the students to join. This page contains links to other sites which I use if they were absent and missed the lesson. The students can also ask questions and post comments on items as well. to help them with their work. The benefits are students are regularly updated on what is happening in the class and it is a forum to ask questions if they can't within the class. 

Upon reading the survey in Seaman et al, I do see that in my faculty, social media has a place, however, now that I am at a school where students do not have regular access to a computer or internet at home, then I am tending to not utilise social media in my teaching practice.           "Many faculty use social media sites for both personal and professional reasons, and a somewhat smaller proportion also believe that social media sites have a place within their courses. There is an interesting age pattern among the 41 percent of teaching faculty who report “monthly or more frequent” social media use in their classes". Seaman et al. (2013)

I think social media does have its benefits for teaching and professional development, it is just how we utilise this method of technology that will either make it great ,or make it fail. 

References 

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrived on 05 May, 2015 from https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3

Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf

Image: Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. Babson Survey Research Group page 13. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf