Soical Media Networking

I found this week’s assignment an extension of week three and I was very glad I had the opportunity to go back to Diigo and explore the different groups available to join. I actually joined two groups the week we looked at Diigo bookmarking. I joined Diigo in Education and Collaborize Classroom week three of our assignments. I was not sure what to expect from joining the group. I get an email daily with updates on education. I find the emails very easy to sift through, because each update has a brief description of the article/news. If I find the article of interest I can then read it and if not I can move on or delete the entire email. Collaborize Classroom is a site that allows teachers, administration, guardians and students to communicate. This week I joined Edutopia because many of the videos we watched in this class were from Edutopia. I thought this may be a good source for research in technology and science education. WeAreTeachers is the final group I joined. This group has many opportunities for lessons and for applying for grants.  

The social media groups I explored are valuable to young and old alike. As adults social media groups allow for communication of ideas for learning and to pass along new information on content and technology. Teachers and parents can communicate about student progress. Young people are able to continue discussions from class and they can also do group projects. I can think of many positive uses for social media in the classroom. Students can keep track of assignments, groups can work outside the classroom, parents can communicate with teachers and administrators and this is only the beginning of social media use. It can only think of a couple of negative issues to overcome in the use of social media. First, not every student has access to technology; therefore the mandatory use of technology cannot be implemented. Second, student and adult communication would need to be monitored to be sure no bullying or poor choice discussions are occurring.

At this time in my life I would probably spend my time in a social network with professional appeal, such as Edmodo or Collaborize Classroom. I have very little spare time and I try to accomplish as much as I can with as few steps. Using an educational social network could help me with lesson planning and research. Another advantage to using an educational site would benefit my students.  Right now the only drawback is that all my students do not have access to technology so I cannot use the site to present and track lessons or have students do work together outside the classroom.

I have found this assignment to be very helpful and I will continue to use Diigo in Education for daily updates in education.