Explore simple, intentional, and safe ways to bring social media into the classroom.
Social networks provide a valuable space for collaboration and community to exist. Socializing is important, and so is safety, so let's talk about both!
Embrace Socializing
Curating content for learners on social media apps like Twitter chats, Facebook groups, Instagram accounts, and more, is a fun and relevant way to capture your students' attention and discuss meaningful content in a current way. Students love to be on social media, so providing opportunities for them to connect with their classmates online, safely, is a recipe for success.
Use the Right Social Media Sites
Collaboration and critical thinking are key. Google Classroom is a great learning tool for creating an interactive experience for student learning. While on this site, students can post, comment, and direct messages with ease. The good news is that you can change the settings depending on how you want to limit the interactions from student to student. Another great feature to utilize across most social media platforms is the hashtag!
Create Safety and Security
How do you help students implement safety tips while on these apps? First, decide what level of boundaries your students need. Every class is different and so is every child, so this very well may look different from group to group and year to year. Setting time limits, creating closed Facebook groups, or exclusively using a closed network Google Classroom can all help to safeguard students from vulnerability. Having firewalls in place, using filtering software, and monitoring student behavior as invaluable. There is a great opportunity here to teach and discuss the importance of creating strong passwords, customizing privacy settings, being mindful of sharing information, declining friend requests from strangers, keeping accounts private, protecting private information, and always thinking before posting.
Social networking is a great way to help foster relationships between students and spark interest in the topic at hand. Creating a system that makes you comfortable and keeps students safe is the key to successfully using social media for educational purposes, and when you can strike that perfect balance, you'll see the magic happen!
