TeachAde

Aisha Bryant

Last summer, I set up an Summer Blog for my students using a secure site called KidBlog. It was a great way for me to share what I was doing and for my students to stay in touch and WRITE over the summer.

Check it out!
http://kidblog.org/home/

N Brek

Since I teach at the center for talented youth the university uses social networking to promote student achievements, to promote now course offerings and advertise our summer program. The facebook page we have in place also includes useful information about inventors and trivia questions to keep the students up-to-date with current events.

Kelly Lannon

One of the newest ways I've learned to use social networking is through Pinterest. There are so many great ideas on there for anything and everything. I've come across some great resources for the new Common Core Standards as well as general classroom management ideas. My school also uses Twitter to promote Music and the Arts and to showcase what students are working on in their specials. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from parents regarding this.

Christie Wilson

I love Pinterest and am amazed at how much I use it in my planning! I hope to get better at sharing and posting rather just lurking and using ideas!!

I also try to follow blogs of teachers in the discipline which has been extremely helpful since I switched positions this fall. I started my own professional blog, but I have not been able to post often though. When I was posting regularly, I would tweet the link as a way to make new connections.

Aisha Bryant

Pinterest is AMAZING! I have found many resources too! I wonder if there is a way to start a student centered "Pinterest"! This may be a great way for students to comment on projects where visuals and displays are important.

Rachel Berkowitz

I agree about using Pinterest in the classroom. I have found amazing ideas on there for my classroom. It can be simple things like getting ideas for holidays at school like valentines day or halloween. Pinterest can also be using for lessons and finding activities. Twitter is something that the PTA uses at my school to communicate information with the parents. It has been something that I have been thinking about incorporating into my classroom into the future. It would be an easy way to communicate information to the parents.

Dina Manevich

I also use Pinterest as a resource for the classroom. This site has awesome ideas and examples of activities that relate to the curriculum. I also use YouTube and Discovery Education to show educational clips or movies to my students. This is a great way to reteach information and reconfirm the content. The students usually respond positively to YouTube or Discovery Education because it is a different type of teaching tool. Finally, my principal uses twitter to share information with parents throughout the day. He was in my classroom when we were using Photostory to retell the life-cycle of different plants. He twitted how a kindergarten class was using technology to show their understanding. Parents follow him on twitter and were please to receive constant communication.

J Seibert

I created a blog called Blog of a Butterfly. In second grade we observe butterflies go through their life cycle. I decided to do this after reading Diary of a Worm. In partners, students would create a blog entry from the butterflies perspective. They would include information about the stage of the life cycle they were going through. We also included a slide show of their caterpillar projects. We also created multiple choice questions based on what we had learned about buttflies for parents to answer.

aabrow02

As the graduate administrator for my academic department, I use social networking to remain in contact with the various students who have graduated from the degree program. Many of our alums frequently return to the program to give guest talks. My academic department also uses social network to post event announcements.

k Morgan

I have not used social networking in my classes, but I have heard great things about Edmoto. I plan to begin using Edmoto as we begin the fourth quarter to work any kinks with using this social networking platform to interact with the students in and out of school. I love that I can have students post questions, comments, links, and answer poll questions throughout the year.

mmataac1

Since I work with elementary students, I admit that I hardly use social networking at all in my classroom. I am cautious about internet safety especially when it comes to younger students. However, I came across an article before in "The Washington Post" about how one high school teacher applies the Facebook format in her instruction. She has student make "profiles" of literary characters or historical characters online. Students would then create statuses based on their characters. I've taught about how I can apply this strategy in my class. I think students would enjoy taking on these real figures and determining what kinds of statements they would make. Although I wouldn't have my students create actual Facebook accounts, I could modify this activity and still have them use technology.

Bassmah

The one time I used social networking in an educational setting was when I worked as an instructor in a children's summer program. The summer program had a different theme everyday, one day would be "Animal Day" the other would be "Plant Day" and so on. The summer program had its own Facebook page, I was required to keep the page updated by creating albums of each day in the program and providing some information on what the children did and learned about that day. The parents of the children enrolled in the program thought that the Facebook page was great because they were constantly updated with what their children were doing. In addition, other parents who viewed this page thought that the program was offering valuable lessons to the children and they enrolled their children in the program. I found it difficult to keep the page updated on a daily basis, but after a few days I got used to the process and the positive feedback pushed me to keep up my postings.