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Professional Online Social Networks - Mindlab Week 30



My use of social media until the past couple of years has been primarily for private, social purposes. I would consider myself a very fluent user in this respect! Suitably high expectations regarding privacy and ethical contact in public has meant that until until these last couple of years I have been wary about the place of social media in learning. My eyes have been opened though!
As a teacher of young students, I haven’t included social media in our learning programme beyond being consumers of YouTube videos and offering posts of our activities to our school Facebook page moderator. These uses definitely add value to the classroom experiences, in terms of bringing new ideas into the classroom and sharing our learning with the world even in a small way - however I can appreciate how valuable it would to take a broader view of what social media is, and find appropriate ways for students to interact themselves. In watching Kathy Cassidy (Tvo parents, 2013) speak about her 6 & 7 year old students creating their own blogs and connecting with the world in such a safe and relevant way, I am newly inspired. Children’s homes and worlds are digitally connected, and their learning should take advantage of the connectivity that digital and social media allows. One of my favourite things to do with students is to look back at their writing work from the start of the year, and to compare with their current work to see how far they have developed. Using digital tools to record students reading, for example, and preserving it online for students to reflect on over time, is a great example of how the use of social media could augment learning experiences.


One of the potential challenges in my context would be to find a suitable platform that assures safety and privacy, and to be user-friendly for the young students I teach. Our school has previously used a complicated platform for online learner profiles which even tech-savvy teachers struggled to use, let alone younger students. Privacy is a major factor - many of our students currently do not have parental permission to have their images or work published online, so policies and permissions would need to updated (alongside communication with whanau) once a good digital tool was selected.
For my personal professional development, I have become a more regular user of social media for work purposes. I have started to use Twitter to connect with incredible educators and thought-leaders from all over the world, and I belong to a popular Facebook user-group that is continually being posted-to by teachers from all over New Zealand. I find it a useful place for being inspired by other’s practice, finding/sharing relevant resources, and being connecting to other practitioners across the country from every possible type of school. It has been particularly useful as we moved into our new ILE this year - we asked questions and sought advice from our peers over queries from furniture placement to programme decisions. One of the most supportive aspects of this group is hearing others share problems and questions that I have been asking myself - which helps to realise that we are not alone and there are others wrestling with similar issues across the country, whatever the issue may be.


Melhuish (2013) notes that the spontaneous nature of these sorts of informal learning encounters may not have the same effect as sustained professional learning with clear outcomes, but that these informal experiences may serve as ‘enablers’ for teacher practice. This is definitely my experience, and the value of a well-timed ‘enabling’ experience or having a quality, thought-provoking reading at my fingertips cannot be undervalued in a teacher’s time-poor working week!

**This post was prepared as part of the requirements for CISC8100 Applied Practice in Context, for the fulfillment of requirements of a Post-Graduate Diploma in Applied Practice (Digital and Collaborative Learning) via Mindlab for UNITEC.
References
Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han...

Tvoparents. (2013, May 21). Using Social Media in the Classroom.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

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