Communicating and Collaborating with Social Media

Learning outcome:

Describe how teachers can use communication and social networking technologies as teaching and learning tools.

Communication and social networking technologies provide ways for teachers to connect with students, promote meaningful learning beyond the hours of a school day. Teachers can make decisions and choices about the type of digital communication system. They can teach students about synchronous communication which the students do everyday. They do this everyday by having conversations with their friends over text messages. I think using social networking technologies is a very good idea if you are teaching middle or high school because they use social media everyday. I don't think students in elementary school should use networking technologies until they are older. They are not exposed to social media as much as older students.


Tech tool 8.1

Taskstream and ebloggers are programs that allow users to create many features and functions for their blogs. The websites are protected by a password. They are also private which allows for you and your students to communicate between each other with out worrying that everyone under the sun can see the conversations. I looked at both of the websites and think both of the websites are very creative. They are both easy to navigate for students and teachers. Defiantly something I would like to use!


Chapter 8 summary

Chapter 8 is about ways teachers and students can use computers and social media to learn and communicate in the classroom. The first section of the chapter talks about how teachers and students can communicate electronically through different ways. For example email, blogs and teacher or classroom websites. I feel email is the best form of communication between teachers and students outside of the classroom. The next section talks about how teachers can use email to communicate with there students. One thing that I really liked in this section is the idea of using text messaging to teach about spelling. I think this is a very good idea because so many students will write papers like they are sending a text message. I feel this will help stop students from doing that. The last section of the chapter talks about how wikis can be a collaborated learning strategies. It also talks about how it is good for students to work in a collaborated learning environment. The end of the section talks about how to make a wiki and how to use it in the classroom and in lesson plans.



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