What are the best examples you have seen of teachers using social media to enhance learning?

I am sure that each teacher wants his students to feel comfortable, interested and

motivated in his lessons and take an active role in learning process. That is why

social media is practical tool for teachers to interconnect schools’ and everyday

life and make better learning offers for their students.

 

School is an important part of students’ life and can’t be separated from reality.

And social media is also a part of students’ life – so we can pretend or even

deny that it exists or we can help them to use social media as a tool for their

educational growth. I do allow students to use environment that they feel

comfortable with (I mean social media) and often learn to use it from them. I

also see that tools like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Skype ect. give greater

motivation for students to explore and learn subject.

Writing blog posts

Great way how to motivate students to write their own opinion on various

topics. Blogs help students to learn how to write comments and create

discussion online. They learn to be polite and be responsible for what they write

online. My students have created culture diaries (online blogs) to write short

references on cultural events they have attended.

Tweets

I have met teachers who post tweets before their lessons (tasks, questions,

triggers). Teachers have found this as a good way to reach students and to

motivate them to come to lessons. I use twitter to get feedback from my

students about different questions, for example, what they have learned in this

lesson or how did they like teaching method we used.

Skype for online lessons

My colleague leads lessons online using Skype for communication. Useful tool

for these lessons is doc.google.com where students can cooperate while working

on one document or fill out worksheets which teacher can see.

During history lessons, my students have witnessed different historical events,

which they have visited to tweet about them and inform modern people what

were the causes of these events and what consequences they have left to modern

world. For example, my students have tweeted from Europe shortly after the

Crusades, they have visited court of Byzantine emperor Justinian I, they have

traveled to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to tweet about the most important

cultural achievements of these civilizations.

However, the use of social media in learning process is not a goal for itself. For

me it is simple and effective way how I can make curriculum more attractive for

my students and develop important skills for them. Using social media students

learn more productively because learning outcomes are based on their personal

experience. It means that even without direct instructions from teacher, students

know what they have to do to obtain desired learning outcomes.

 

What are the good news about social media – you can use them even without

internet connection and computers (in my case – I don’t have any in my

classroom). But I use the Facebook and Twitter anyway, just on a paper. Students

recognize it and know how to use it (language, requirements and so on), and the

effect on their learning motivation is the same.

 

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