Social Media in the Classroom

By now most people have a social media account whether it be Facebook, Twitter, a blog, or all if not more. I believe that social media can be a tool for the classroom. new studies have shown, people are getting more of their news from social media sites than ever before. Even news stations are beginning to use social media as a way to report the news. Take Egypt for example, if you really wanted to know what was happening you could have checked twitter, by looking at the trending topics you could see all the posts of people that are talking about Egypt and their revolution. Not only would you find what people are saying about it but there are links to pictures and to articles that have been written on the subject.
Though some teachers have used these media outlets inappropriately, this doesn’t mean we should shy away from them. Lets use the Egypt story for example, if you teach world geography like I do you could use Twitter to stay up with current events with the changing political, and physical landscape of Egypt. You could also use Twitter for a contemporary issues class to see what is trending right now, and tie that into your curriculum.
Not only can you use Social media as a news source you can use it for such things as keeping your students, and parents involved in what is going on in your classroom. I not only have a Blog set up for my class but I have a twitter account that lets me send out tweets on a particular article that I might have read that the students might find interesting. I have also used it to remind them of the test we have coming up tomorrow so they can study. Our students are spending so much time online these days this is a way to reach them, and still have a cool factor to it as well.
I think we are at the beginning of a new type of online classroom that reaches outside our traditional brick and mortar classroom.
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