Social Media Literacy
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| photo attributed to psychcentral.com |
When you integrate technology into the classroom, attention becomes an area that students can begin to struggle with. I do a large amount of my interventions through apps like MobyMax. It is often really hard for me to tell if students are giving their full attention to the activities within the program. I often get information back from the activities that do not match what I know their ability is. This is an area that I feel is essential for students to become successful. I think that even though this was written 8 years ago, the same information he spoke to about attention is true. When I was in college, I took several classes that were in large lecture halls. I was often on my phone, tablet, or computer and I am sure it looked like I wasn't paying attention to the professor. However, just as he mentioned in his article, I was fully engaged in the information.
The other area that I think is important is collaboration. This is a tricky literacy without integrating technology and social media in the mix. However, I think that technology would actually help teach collaborative skills to students. We didn't do very much collaboration with technology when I was in school. If we did any group work, it was always the typical setting where you work at a table and one person does all of the work. Now that I am in a professional setting, most of my team projects are done using Google Drive. This type of literacy is incredibly important for students to become literate in. The only thing that I feel is a little bit outdated in this article was when he spoke to raising funds and working collaboratively. Technology has grown so much in this sense. Raising funds, and organizing projects has become so much easier. I was able to use Donor's Choose to organize and fund the transformation of my classroom into a flexible seating classroom. If I wasn't literate in collaboration, this would have been an incredibly difficult task. Check out the Donor's Choose website to see how easy it is collaborate classroom projects. www.donorschoose.org
Hello Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. My sister frequently uses Donor's Choose for her classroom. It's a great way to get materials without digging too deep into your own pocket. I totally get what you are saying when it seems like you are not paying attention. I am always fighting to get the attention of my students when they have a Chromebook in front of them, but I am constantly on my phone while watching TV. My wife is always giving me a hard time, especially when I choose a show to watch and I spend half the time looking at my phone. It's the same with the students. Our attention may be divided, but we are still paying attention. Thanks for posting.
Theresa
Theresa I appreciated your honesty about how you are sometimes just as distracted as the kids.
DeleteHi Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you attention and collaboration are very important aspects in the learning process. You need to provide undivided attention to the person you are communicating with in order to get the most out of the conversation, lesson or any other situation. This way your response is no so far removed from the conversation itself. Our students are so used to multi-tasking that it carry's over into every part of their life.
Collaboration is so important because while working together, you are able to accomplish so much. Social media is a great collaboration tool. I've used it to plan social events, raise money and just get people to think sometimes. When you collaborate, you have more than one brain to complete a task.
Very interesting perspective on being able to collaborate better online. I was happy to see that point of view- haven't given it much thought before. Congrats on your success with DonorsChoose!
ReplyDelete