Using social online networks in teaching and professional development

Using social online networks in teaching and professional development 

Current Use of Social Media

I first started to use the internet in the early nineties during my PhD studies it was early days and coloured photographs were rare and webpages were mostly text. It was the heady days of word 3.1 and windows 95 was still yet to make its mark.  However it was useful to contact other experts to discuss results and possible next steps.  Move on 20 years and we now have plethora of social media platforms with a multitude of companies vying for their share of the market.

I have always used the internet, school capabilities allowing, in my classroom and have adopted digital technologies where appropriate to enhance the students learning.  Over term 4 last year I became paperless, using teacher dashboard,with one of my classes which proved both a learning experience for both me and the students.  I have continued this exercise with one of my NCEA classes this year, it will interesting to see the results of this come November and the external assessments.

Personally I use social media such as Pininterest, great for ideas and I have evened pinned the odd thing.  I have used You tube as both as consumer and creator in and out of the classroom. This is great for showing video of experiments we are not not longer able to do in the laboratory due to health and safety regulations.  Also the students have uploaded video of their explanations and enactments of various scientific principles.   Although I have both a facebook and twitter account I have not tried to use it in classroom or educational setting.  As mentioned in the establishing safeguards video (1) I have yet to find a purpose or a learning outcome that would enhance the students experience that would be worth the effort and time to establish a class facebook page or twitter account.

The Paradox of Choice

In past decade there has been an explosion of products and platforms available for us as educators to use.  For classroom management of information in our school we have moodle, google classroom and teacher dashboard.  In creating work should I use windows or google products and which of the almost endless apps we have for andriod and ios should I use or encourage the student to use. The amount of choice for digital and social media we have access creates a large amount of stress. Which is best? Have I made the right choice?  Indeed this was summed up in the book "The paradox of choice" (2) where the idea is that "we have too many choices, too many decisions, too little time to do what is really important". I highly recommend reading this book although its about consumerism there are many parallels that could be applied to current teaching methods. 

Where am I at?

With the fast paced changes that our happening in education and in our school I seem to have to run faster to stand still like I am at the gym and each year the speed of the treadmill is increasing eventually I'll fall a get shot off the back. However despite that I endeavour to add more technology into my teaching and I certainly find my interaction with the students is not longerconfined to school hours.  Feedback often happens outside school hours via collaborative software and the internet. Indeed I'll continue to strive and adapt my pedagogy to motivate and inspire the students attitude towards science.  Vitual reality explosions anybody?

(1) Education council. (2012). Establishing safeguards. (2) Paradox of Choice, Harper Perennial 2004 (ISBN 0060005688)