Journal #8: Tapping the Weath of Social Networks for Professional Development

Greenhow, C. (2009). Tapping the wealth of social networks for professional development. Learning & Leading, 36(8), Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume3620082009/JuneJulyNo8/36810g.pdf

Summary:

Social networks are becoming increasingly popular, not just among students.  Teachers are beginning to tap into their value as well.  This article is about the advantages of schools and teachers evolving and adapting to the emerging digital world at their disposal.  Because many of these technologies are relatively new to education, there is a need for more research to be conducted regarding how to use them in the classroom and the true impact technology has on education as a whole.

Two trends are particularly evident with regards to teacher use of social networking tools.  The first is social bookmarking which is a tool for people to share their bookmarks and sites of interests with an online community.  The usefulness of this in the education is that it facilitates collaboration and helps users share valuable scholarly articles, journals, sources they come across.  Social networking can also be used as a way to gain more access to support from colleagues and peers and to share our creativity online.  Sites such as Facebook, Classroom 2.0, and Twitter all fall under this trend.  Self-reflection and analysis has always been a very important part of teaching and these types of resources allow teachers to evaluate their performance and trouble shoot areas which need improvement.  Teachers can also receive more professional recognition for their research and work in the classroom through these types of social networking sites.  If used properly, these sites are also helpful to students wanting to broadcast their work through a safe medium.  In the coming years, we will see more of the advantages and effects of social networking sites and will also hopefully be better-equipped to deal with the disadvantages.

Q1: Am I likely to use twitter in an elementary school setting?

I probably would not use twitter with elementary school students.  The instant polling is an awesome feature if all students or participants have cell phones, but I know most of my students won't and it seems like a more sophisticated tool to be used in middle or high school grades.  I think it could be a valuable resource to utilize with other teachers at my school because we could post questions and answers there and share our thoughts about our classrooms and schools.  Events could be posted to keep everyone updated.  Parents could be brought into the equation as they could "follow" the tweets of their children's teachers.  In that sense, twitter and other social media would be a great asset to the elementary school classroom!

Q2: What are the implications of social networking tools being so new to the field of education?

Greenhow mentions a few times that research on using such technology in the classroom is very limited because of how new it is.  I think that this is important to remember when incorporating wikis and twitter and blogs into schools because we must be very responsible and use good judgment with such powerful tools.  Digital responsibility and citizenship are such new terms that not everyone is aware of them.  We should continue to research the effects and proper ways of using technology in the classroom as it emerges within education.