USING SOCIAL MEDIA Social media can allow you to easily connect and communicate with experts in areas you want to learn more about, help you answer questions you may have, or simply branch out and learn from people with different ideas. As a professional, it opens the doors to connections you could not make unless you are constantly networking with people in person at conferences. With all the advantages also comes a great responsibility to represent yourself as a professional. The ease of finding and learning ideas from people is the same when it comes to others getting to know you. You are putting yourself out to the social media world to hear your thoughts, and an inappropriate comment or post could cause others to have a negative perception of you and possibly limit your future collaboration or even employment opportunities. Proper use of social media using basic common sense could definitely avoid unnecessary issues. INAPPROPRIATE POSTS As a fourth grade teacher, I have never experienced finding an inappropriate post by one of my students. It would definitely shock me if I did stumble upon something inappropriate any of my students posted online. If I did find something, my first step would be to share that with my principal, I would also set a meeting with parents to make them aware of the situation. Since the student should not have a social media account at that age, I would share some information with the parents and try to provide some resources so they can have a plan at home regarding the matter. After reading the article on EdTechTeacher and thinking of the approach this individual took, I felt like most people that would speak up with these type of posts would not take the same approach. Many would immediately call them out publicly instead of taking a more private approach, which could make it even worse. I feel that a careful approach needs to be taken to allow the student that made this comment to realize it was wrong, and to make better choices with social media use in the future.
5 Comments
Amanda Olson
3/11/2018 11:04:39 am
I am in complete agreement about social media being an incomparable form of professional development. It is absolutely incredible how many connections and communities we can create with other educators through social media that previously could have only been achieved through attending conferences and other in-person forms of communication. Now that we have an infinite number of resources, connections, strategies, skills, activities, etc. that have been created, implemented, and shared by educators all over the world at our very fingertips we can so much more effectively meet the needs of all of our learners. It allows me to think outside of what I have come to know as "good teaching" and "best practices," and I think this constant recontemplation allows me to find, try, and even create my own ideas that I would have never thought of myself. What is your favorite social media platform for professional development and why? Along with this abundance of resources, has at times come a sense of feeling quite overwhelmed. I at times feel as though I am on information overload, and get sidetracked from my initial intentions. I often try and remind myself that I would rather focus on quality than quantity and do one or several new things to the best of my ability, than an abundance of things mediocre. I feel as though many educators get bogged down in a sense of information overload and rather than allowing themselves to develop professionally, they shut down and revert to what they have always done. I want to make sure I am always an innovative educator and am open to new ideas to improve student learning, and therefore I want to continue to employ social media as a platform for professional development, but I want to moderate it by creating/setting goals for myself and steps for accomplishing them. Have you ever felt a sense of information overload and found yourself completely off topic from what you had originally sent out to implement in your classroom?
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Scott Marsden
3/13/2018 06:59:35 pm
Amanda,
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Rian
3/11/2018 07:10:12 pm
You have a solid plan if you should ever find a student's inappropriate post! You are correct when you say that a little common sense would alleviate many social media mishaps.
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Scott Marsden
3/13/2018 07:02:28 pm
Jose,
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Diana Olguin
3/13/2018 09:06:26 pm
Although putting yourself out in the social media world is easy to do, our students at times find it challenging to keep their inappropriate comments from appearing in the public eye. Teaching our students digital citizenship from a young age, hopefully will keep them from making worse mistakes later on. Also, teaching the parents how to navigate social media sites could be useful in helping prevent students from posting inappropriate comments on any site.
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