Using Social Media in the Classroom

Using Social Media in the Classroom

So what's the  buzz about? And do I let my seven and eight year olds use this Social Media in my Classroom?

My role, at school, this year is to get our Year Three students ready for the digital classes next year. To a large extent I have succeeded, the one thing that still needs to be addressed  is the social media aspect. Here I feel I need to tread carefully. 

Vicki Davis states, in her blog- A guidebook for social media in the classroom (2014), 

      Social media is here. It's just another resource and doesn't have to be a distraction from 

      learning objectives. Social media is just another tool that  you can use to make your 

      classroom engaging, relevant and culturally diverse.  

 I fully understand and agree with the the above statement. And my students are very keen to share their work, so we share it with other students within the school, teachers and the student's parents. 

Kathy Cassidy (2013) talks about the importance of students being connected and growing up to  a future where they will be communicating with people in other countries. This statement reminds me of the vision in our own curriculum document which states that we want our young people to be confident, connected, actively involved, life long learners. 

Daniel Wilczak (2013) states that  through blogs  students can learn how to express their thoughts and ideas and reflect on real world problems. He also states it gives the quiet student a voice. He further states that blogs could be used for collaborative knowledge building. I have seen evidence of this on our students blogs when they blog about: books they have read, sports activities they have enjoyed and skills they have learnt. Our seniors have also advertised  our school production on their blogs. I have also seen the excitement of my own students when someone has left a comment on our class blog. 

But with all this exposure in the global community, how safe is it for our little seven year olds.  James Hopkins (2016) blogged about how important it is to educate our students around interactions on line. Our students need to understand why we need to keep personal details out of the public domain. At our school we spend a great deal of time educating our students about cyber safety before they are allowed on the digital equipment. We also keep revising this topic regularly.  But the main idea of his blog was to alert educators to the problem of spammers and what to do. He does state that students within the AkoHiko cluster are familiar with the process. 

So the question still abides- Do I let my little seven and eight year olds loose to blog? 

Well if they are nurtured into blogging correctly, with the correct guidance and tools I think it will take them one step closer on their road to becoming a confident, connected, actively involved, life long learners. 

Step one- students from our senior classes are going to come into my class to teach my students how to leave quality comments on other students blogs, using the AkoHiko comment code- write a positive statement about what has been read, include a thoughtful statement about how it made you feel and then ask a question. Then use this as a reading activity.

Step two- guide students to add their own blog post on the class blog instead of me doing it all the time. 

There are still 7 weeks of school left till the end of this year, so by the end of the year the above should be in place.

References

Davis, V. (2014). A guidebook for social media in the classroom. Edutopia. George Lucas 

          Education Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/guidebook-

          social-media-in-classroom-vicki-davis 

Hoskins, J. (2016). Finding the right process, Ako Hiko Education. Retrieved from

         http://akohiko.blogspot.co.nz/

Tvoparents. (2013). Using Social Media in the Classroom. [video file]. Retrieved from 

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

Wilczak, D. (2013). The effects of blogging and podcasting on student achievement and 

        attitude in the sixth grade science classroom. Montana State University, Bosman 

        Montana Retrieved 

     from http://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/2851/WilczakD0813.pdf?

     sequence=1&isAllowed=y)- 

The influence of law and Ethics

What are ethics?  From our class notes I understand that ethics are learned behaviours that have been shaped by a range of societal influences such as school, work, community, family, church, culture and sports. It is our individual interpretation of ethics that helps shape our ideas about justice, morality and virtue. I believe that everything we do and every decision we make has ethics at its core, which motivates our actions and decisions. I also think ethics are quite personal. What I feel very strongly about may not be quite so compelling to someone else. I am by nature a goody too shoes and I see things in black and white and I see very little grey. 

As I said ethical dilemmas are very much a personal thing and people reading this blog might not think it is too much of this issue, but it made me question what I felt was right or wrong. My dilemma was quite clear cut a few years ago, now it may not be quite so clear cut, although I would still make the same decision.

About five years ago I reconnected with an ex- boy friend, that I was dating when we were both teaching students, through facebook. He was a deputy principal in a school in South Africa, when we reconnected and I had been teaching in New Zealand for fifteen years. We chatted about our teaching experiences and he asked me to send photos of my classroom, my children and their work and he would do the same. At first I thought nothing of it and started planning what I would show off, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was not right. 

Catharyn Baird discusses the idea about a moral compass which is a guide that lets us know how we are supposed to act, we also have communities that have expectations about how we should act and behave. This is true because our teacher registration requires us to be "a person of good character "and we are to be "deemed fit to be a teacher" Hall 2001. Catharyn goes on to say that when these two ideas are in sync life is wonderful, but when they are out of sync we have what she calls ethical tension. 
So the moral compass, my own beliefs, told me this was not the right thing to do. The community our code of ethics for certified teachers states that we are vested by the public with trust .And the law also indicated this was not the right thin to do. The reading on Ethical and professional dilemmas for educators (2012) talks about student confidentiality and a students basic privacy rights. Our own code of ethics states that Teachers will strive to  protect the confidentiality of information about learners.

That was 5 years ago, I decided not to send him the photos, but I did give him my school's website details. 

Today social media and Facebook are even more popular and even if I keep the children's names out of the pictures and work, I still don't feel comfortable about sending this type of information. Our school has, as have  many schools in New Zealand, followed the digital revolution and now our school website has class blogs and, for our digital classes, student's blogs. If he were to look at our school website today he would have a much better insight into a New Zealand school, better than I could have depicted with a few photos. 

As I said earlier, this was my ethical dilemma, another person may not think it is such a big deal. 


References

Baird, C. Ethics for people on the move. TEDxMileHigh  Retrieved 
         from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqMj51Ea1K8

Connecticut's Teacher Education and Mentoring Program. (2012). Ethical and Professional 
         Dilemmas for Education: Facilitators Guide. Retrieved 
         from http://www.ctteam.org/df/resources/Module5_Manual.pdf

Education Council. (n.d). The Education Council Code of Ethics for Certificated Teachers. 
         Retrieved from  https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-t
           eachers-0

Hall, A. (2001). What  ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration 
          of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at theIIPE conference, Brisbane. 
          Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-
           Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-
           Problems-by-Teachers 

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural responsiveness in my practice

This is a topic that has become very important to me. I strongly believe the students I teach have a wealth of indigenous knowledge.  In the reading, Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom (2011), Gutierrezz and Rogoff explain that by validating the students' cultural identity and valuing the knowledge that the students bring with them, we have the potential to make the difference to our students learning. This means really knowing and understanding our students, not just academically but what their beliefs are and what is important to them. Professor Russell  Bishop emphasises the importance of building the teacher-student relationship. This shifts the idea of the teacher in front of the class delivering a lesson to their students, to a more friendly, more inclusive, interactive teaching and learning situation. I am a strong believer in making learning topics more representative of our students worlds. I also believe in using "Ako", where we have teachers as learners and learners as teachers.

Our school strategic plan states that we are committed to the celebration  of cultural diversity. 
For our students, it means
* the incorporation of cultural perspectives as an integral part of the classroom programme, * the celebration of the individuality of each student
* a focus on tolerance and respect of all cultures 
For our staff it means
* awareness and embracing of different cultural perspectives
* fostering opportunities to develop the respect and tolerance for all cultures
* high expectations of all our students
The reading, Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom (2011), goes on to say "culturally responsive teachers contextualise instructions in cultural forms, behaviours and processes of learning familiar to students". Our school has embarked on the communities of mathematical inquiry PD, where we understand how important families  are to Maori and Pacifica, how everyone helps out and how everyone has a job to do and that no-one is left behind. So we base our mixed ability groups on this concept- we are a mathematics family, no one is left behind.Each member in the group has to understand the strategy the group has used. Another very important aspect of a family is respect, which we also include in our lessons. This allows for students to generate friendly arguments in order to understand the concept/strategy fully. Other core values we expect to see children using are reciprocity, inclusion and belonging.  We further include the student's culture and life by making up story sums that are based around their  lives and culture, gaining this information from what our students tell us and from their recounts. We also make up problems about celebrations in their cultures. Our children also have the ability to celebrate their culture during the language weeks that are celebrated in New Zealand. The first week back at school, next term is Fijian language week and we have a Fijian family coming in to assist the classes to learn about the Fijian culture. We have already celebrated Samoan, Tongan, Maori and Arabic Language weeks as well as Matariki.

While we do a great job in celebrating our students' cultural identity I think we could probably do more about understanding indigenous knowledge. There are only a few teachers who have opted for the TESSOL diploma. I found the paper about bilingualism very informative. What people don't fully understand is what Cummins calls the 'common underlying proficiency' idea, where the first language has a rich base and ideas learnt in one language can be transferred to the second language- it does not have to be re-learnt. So in  the classroom we should encourage students to develop their skills in their first language and give them incentives to use their first language in the classroom in order to learn concepts in their second language. Our children come into our class with great knowledge, we as teachers need to plan for this transference of knowledge. 

It is very important that we know our students prior knowledge and build on that.

References

Cummings, J. (1992). Teaching for transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in 
          bilingual education. In J.C. a N.H. Hornberger (Ed). Encyclopedia of language and 
         education (2nd ed). Boston. MA: Springer Science

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 
        53(2), 106-116 

Edtalks. (2012, September 23) A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file]. 
        Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Contemporary Issues or Trends

Doing the readings in this activity reminded me of my brother is so many ways.
The first is how technology has changed in our lives- when my brother was four years old, my mother took us to her work at the bank. She was a teller and in those days everything was done by hand. She was in the process of being trained on the computer. Her boss took us to see this amazing computer. It took up the whole room and had a variety of flashing lights, and all my brother wanted to know was, where the screws were. We were removed from the room very quickly. In those days computers where huge and slow, now they are incredibly small and incredibly fast and the speed of technology growth is mind boggling. The other thing that I am reminded about him is how he struggled at school and just was not interested, today he manages control system designs and system configurations. As a primary school kid he scraped through each year, junior  high was a bit better, but when he hit the last two years of high school everything came together and he passed his final year with 6 distinctions. For him it was electronics that was the light bulb. Sir Ken Robinson talks about divergent thinkers- well I think that four year old who wanted to know what made the computer work didn't fit into the "production line mentality of the schooling system he had to go through. How many of the students in our classrooms are like that four year old? What can we do to engage those students?

I totally agree with Sir Ken Robinson, as I did five years ago, we need to change the paradigms. But now I have a better understanding of 21 century learning and the skills our students will need. We need to shift the focus to student-centred learning, fostering our students' strengths and interests.ERO (2012). The trend I am going to discuss is collaborative learning.

Sir Ken Robinson talks about how children are better at some things and not others, some children like to work in smaller groups rather than larger groups or on their own. He claims most learning happens in groups and that collaboration is the stuff of growth. I have introduced collaborative learning in my classroom this year, as part of wanting to shift the paradigm and also as our school is doing communities of mathematical inquiries.  The collaborative approach focuses on four principles:  the learner at the centre, interaction and doing, working together and solving problems. I have found this to work for most of the children in my class as instead of sitting on their own thinking of ideas and generally getting very little done, if they have some one to discuss ideas with and produce a joint piece of work, I get better quality from my students.It also frees me up to act as a guide and to interact with my students and guide their thinking. It also allows children to learn from each other. I have moved from grouping the children myself to allowing them to choose their own groups. I have an arrangement in my classroom where there is no set seating. Students can choose who to work with. After reading  about seating in the NMC Horizon Report (2015) I will improve this  by introducing the idea of who can "help their learning not harm it" and tie it in with our school motto of "value yourself and value your learning". I can impress the idea of being responsible for their own learning. All new ideas I am working on this year. 

Our notes on collaboration in DCL discussed how traditional schooling does not prepare students well for the work place. In today's word business  projects often require collaboration across companies. (21st Century leaning design). So when planning for collaboration- teachers need to make sure the tasks given have shared responsibilities where all children make decisions together about the problem, after discussing pros and cons, and their work is interdependent. It would be a good idea to let children work across classes too, maybe even across schools.



References

Education Review Office. (2012). Evaluation at a glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand 
       Schools.    Retrieved  from http://www.ero.govt.nz/About-Us/News-Media-Release...

ITL Research. 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Microsoft Partners in learning. Retrieved
          from https://app.themindlab.com/media/19751/view 

New Media Consortium. (2015). NMC Horizon report: 2015 K-12 Edition Retrieved from 
           http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf

The RSA. (2010). RSA Animate- Changing Education Paradigms.[video file]. Retrieved from
           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Current Issues in my Professional Context

What does a School say about itself when you walk in?

So much is said about a schools culture. Dr Kent D. Peterson describes it as "a set of norms, values and beliefs, rituals and ceremonies, symbols and stories that make up the "persona" of the school" (2016). I think I am really lucky to be at a school that has a positive vibe that whanau and visitors comment on, when at our school.

So what makes our school so special? I agree that a school's culture is "seen in the way that people relate to and with each other, the management of the school's structures, the physical environment and the extent to which there is a learning focus for both pupils and adults, including the nature of that focus". Stoll. (1998). Our school motto " Value yourself, Value your learning and Respect all others", underpins everything we do at our school. We are in our fourth year of our positive behaviour for learning initiative. This has definitely improved on the good practices we already had in place- it just made it better.

I don't believe school culture has anything to do with the socioeconomic status of our children. We are a so called decile one school, but if you spoke to our students you will see confident  students who know what they are learning and who take pride in their learning.Our students know what they need to learn and most of them set their own goals. They also have many opportunities to develop their leadership skills.  The school's latest ERO report states that we celebrate our "diverse community and values inclusion, equity and a culturally responsive curriculum. Leaders and trustees promote parent, whānau and community collaboration and partnership to enhance student learning and wellbeing. The school’s focus on students as individuals promotes their sense of belonging and engagement in learning." 
2016 ERO Report. 


In the Stoll's (1998) article, Stoll and Fink identified ten cultural norms that interconnected and I feel that we as a school really do these well. As teachers know in what direction our school is heading each term. We know what the focuses are, we discuss and analyse our data in syndicates and school wide, then set new goals. We are all driven to succeed for the good of our students and our school. We have a great collegial staff, all working together, offering help and support where needed. We are constantly trying to improve our practises, we are all learning by being involved in the same PD. We are all encouraged to take risks and there is mutual respect and genuine openness as we grapple with our new learning. We enjoy each others company and there is a good feeling among all the staff, support staff included. We are the role models for our students and most of these norms are also implemented in our classes. Because they value themselves, students know what their goals are for their learning, can articulate their learning and know how to use the success criteria to succeed. By valuing their learning, they are learning to work with each other in collaborative tasks, we also have students teaching each other. Respecting all others includes supporting each other and respecting everybody's input. Our students know that we, their teachers are learning too and that just like them we are lifelong learners.  

I feel that all the above works because we have a principal that has vision and passion but it also depends on teacher buy in, as S Gargiulo, Principal of Manurewa High School indicated in his paper on Principal sabbatical report. 





References

Gargiulo, S. (2014). Principal sabbatical report. Retrieved from  
          http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Professional-
         information/Principals-sabbatical-reports/Report-archives-for-2007-2014/Secondary-
         award-recipients-2014/Gargiulo-Salvatore

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network's Bulletin 9. Institute of 
      Education, University of London.  Retrieved from 
      http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-
      Culture

Education  World (2016). Is your school's culture toxic or positive? Retrieved from
      http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin275.shtml