This week I went through Pinterest and Google looking for examples of successful uses of social media in classroom assignments. There is a great deal of content available, however, I can see how there is a lot room to explore new and different ideas for using Social Media in the classroom. Please visit the link to my Pinterest board where I mentioned all the different classroom learning ideas that I discovered while doing my search. In the comments, I also described some simple and straight forward ideas for applying these techniques in the high school classroom setting.
The examples listed in the board show how students can use social media for assessment, research, and communication. I appreciate that there are several example from high ed for using social media, because sometime I feel that the elementary and secondary school levels are unique in using education technology so extensively. However, students are on social media. In many ways their personal relationships and online relationships are deeply inter-connected; you cannot have one without the other. Therefore it will be very useful for teacher to tap into this world. I want students to see that they content teaching it relevant to their world. If we use social media we can have students personal lives interconnect with their learning.
I think that the most inspiring use for social media in the classroom is for re-creating the PLE and PLNs for students to use. I want to use Twitter in a safe way to allow students to communicate with each other and outside world on issues that are relevant to the class.
Julian A. Elorduy, MET, MA 