TeachAde

mmataac1

Since I work with elementary students, I admit that I hardly use social networking at all in my classroom. I am cautious about internet safety especially when it comes to younger students. However, I came across an article before in "The Washington Post" about how one high school teacher applies the Facebook format in her instruction. She has student make "profiles" of literary characters or historical characters online. Students would then create statuses based on their characters. I've taught about how I can apply this strategy in my class. I think students would enjoy taking on these real figures and determining what kinds of statements they would make. Although I wouldn't have my students create actual Facebook accounts, I could modify this activity and still have them use technology.

Bassmah

The one time I used social networking in an educational setting was when I worked as an instructor in a children's summer program. The summer program had a different theme everyday, one day would be "Animal Day" the other would be "Plant Day" and so on. The summer program had its own Facebook page, I was required to keep the page updated by creating albums of each day in the program and providing some information on what the children did and learned about that day. The parents of the children enrolled in the program thought that the Facebook page was great because they were constantly updated with what their children were doing. In addition, other parents who viewed this page thought that the program was offering valuable lessons to the children and they enrolled their children in the program. I found it difficult to keep the page updated on a daily basis, but after a few days I got used to the process and the positive feedback pushed me to keep up my postings.