This week, I've been using a lot of social media in an educational context. I learned that both of my kids' Kindergarten teacher tweet regularly about classroom activities and, in my Instructional Technology class, students are starting their Personal Learning Network project, which includes signing up Twitter and other accounts to use technology to engage globally and locally, an ISTE Standard for Educators, so I've also been tweeting more regularly. Also, this blog.
Once upon a time, circa 2010, I wrote a conference paper titled, "Social Media Guidelines and the Gaze" that I presented at the Mid-western Educational Research Associations conference in Columbus. At the time, social media was just starting to be used in schools and districts were cracking down on its use by blocking those websites (including all blogs, which may seem absurd now) and publishing guidelines for the ways that students and teachers should behave on social media. Rereading the paper is another reminder of the speed at which technology and technology integration moves. It was a moment of time where fear was guiding policy and the fear subsided slowly over time, so much so that now teachers are encouraged to have a Twitter account where they regularly post pictures of their students and regularly engage with administrators in PD by way of #edchats of various sorts.
I'm glad the move has been away from fear and toward the possibility in local and global connections, but there is still a mountain of data to wade through. As I help students consider their digital footprint and start to build a professional one, I'm wondering most about my own children's digital footprint. So far, I have created their footprint through my Facebook account and now their teachers are adding to that. Where will this information be in years and years when they apply for college and jobs? Since most kids will have this same footprint and this is just the way that most people communicate now, will it matter at all? Am I glad that I grew up in a time when my likeness wasn't as readily available or do I wish I could look back see what mom and I were doing on this day in August of 1986? I'm not sure, but I know that I am seeing many benefits to the tweets of my kids' Kindergarten teachers so far. 1) I am comforted to see them enjoying their time in school, since it is their first full day experience. 2) I am happy to see them engaging in constructivist learning and to see that the teachers are articulating why these methods work. 3) I have more to talk to them about when they come home, when I can reference a picture and activity. 4) I feel more connected to the classroom and the teacher than I did when they were in preschool because I can interact quickly and casually. There's more to consider though... I wonder what sorts of sticky situations have come about because of sharing classroom activities on Facebook. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out, and in that case: It's obviously a selective window into the classroom, so how do teachers choose what to share? How is tweeting shaping the way that teachers teach? Are teachers more likely to teach using constructivist methods because they share or are they seeing more varied methods by having access to other teachers and is that shaping their teaching?
Starting the journey with my own students is full of anxiety and possibility, but I'm always up for the ed tech roller coaster ride, so here we go!
Once upon a time, circa 2010, I wrote a conference paper titled, "Social Media Guidelines and the Gaze" that I presented at the Mid-western Educational Research Associations conference in Columbus. At the time, social media was just starting to be used in schools and districts were cracking down on its use by blocking those websites (including all blogs, which may seem absurd now) and publishing guidelines for the ways that students and teachers should behave on social media. Rereading the paper is another reminder of the speed at which technology and technology integration moves. It was a moment of time where fear was guiding policy and the fear subsided slowly over time, so much so that now teachers are encouraged to have a Twitter account where they regularly post pictures of their students and regularly engage with administrators in PD by way of #edchats of various sorts.
I'm glad the move has been away from fear and toward the possibility in local and global connections, but there is still a mountain of data to wade through. As I help students consider their digital footprint and start to build a professional one, I'm wondering most about my own children's digital footprint. So far, I have created their footprint through my Facebook account and now their teachers are adding to that. Where will this information be in years and years when they apply for college and jobs? Since most kids will have this same footprint and this is just the way that most people communicate now, will it matter at all? Am I glad that I grew up in a time when my likeness wasn't as readily available or do I wish I could look back see what mom and I were doing on this day in August of 1986? I'm not sure, but I know that I am seeing many benefits to the tweets of my kids' Kindergarten teachers so far. 1) I am comforted to see them enjoying their time in school, since it is their first full day experience. 2) I am happy to see them engaging in constructivist learning and to see that the teachers are articulating why these methods work. 3) I have more to talk to them about when they come home, when I can reference a picture and activity. 4) I feel more connected to the classroom and the teacher than I did when they were in preschool because I can interact quickly and casually. There's more to consider though... I wonder what sorts of sticky situations have come about because of sharing classroom activities on Facebook. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out, and in that case: It's obviously a selective window into the classroom, so how do teachers choose what to share? How is tweeting shaping the way that teachers teach? Are teachers more likely to teach using constructivist methods because they share or are they seeing more varied methods by having access to other teachers and is that shaping their teaching?
Starting the journey with my own students is full of anxiety and possibility, but I'm always up for the ed tech roller coaster ride, so here we go!