Weed 4 of CeDO 535

This week we turned our attention to several different things.  Social Bookmarking, Podcasts and Screencasting, Social Networks and Micro-blogging in the classroom all were discussed.

This is not the first time in this MEIT Cohort progression that we have talked about social bookmarking.  Digg, Diigo, Deli.cio.us and Stumbleupon are all relatively nice ways to be able to share your favorite sites with others. One of the nice things about Digg, Diigo and Stumbleupon is that you are able to login to each and share information with your facebook account.  This way you are able to easily use social networking in conjunction to the social functions of the social bookmarking sites.  Deli.cio.us has just restarted as a social bookmarking site.  There is a blog that details the status of the restart.

Speaking about social networking, I found this picture posted by one of my facebook friends.

Not only can Facebook be used as a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but it can be used specifically to focus on current events or the topics that a classroom is discussing.  The problem with sites such as Facebook, is that many districts block access to sites such as this.  If students do not have access to sites such as this, then educators are not easily able to show them how to use it for not only a social media, but also as a learning tool.  The good/bad thing about districts blocking social media sites is that while it is more difficult for students to misuse these sites during a school day, it is more likely that students will not use them as anything other than a site to connect socially or cause drama that then spills back into the schools.  The other issue is that in many cases, students are still checking their social media sites on their smart phones during the school day even though the use of such phones might also be banned during the school day.  This causes more issue for classroom management for the educators.

Podcasts and Screencasts would be very useful in many situations for education.  In MPS the only problem that I would have with trying to use these media to get messages to my students outside of class is that the population that is able to use a computer outside of school is only about 80% of the students I teach.  There are also students who have internet connected computers at home, but they are locked away in a parents room, inaccessible to the student.  The main way I might be able to use a podcast or screencast as a part of my class is to use them for students who missed classes so that they do not fall behind.  In many cases, students who miss class, not only miss the work for the day, but also the explanation of the work.  For most students, this explanation is the more important of the two components that they missed.  

Micro-blogging is a great way to send out quick information to the students who follow your Twitter account.  For students who follow, they would be reminded of due dates, assessments and other important classroom happenings.  But again, this is only for students who are able to 1) have access to the internet outside of school, and 2) have access to Twitter.