I want to start this week with a discussion on social media and education. We talked in a prior post about using social media, and how prevalent it is in education, but this is about the dos and don'ts.
Did you know that your next possible employer might be facebook-stalking you? Kind of scary to think about right? According to an article on TNW news,(http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/04/18/survey-37-of-your-prospective-employers-are-looking-you-up-on-facebook/) 37% of employers are looking you up before they hire you. As interesting or scary as that thought is, what is worse is that people (educators) are being fired for venting on social media sites. (http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2010/08/teacher-fired-over-facebook-comments.html)
So, what do you think? Personally, I believe that it is our professional responsibility to monitor ourselves and what we post online. Society has decided that if we are teachers we are always teachers. What I mean is that no matter where you are at any time you are a teacher. As was said by Aunt May (hope you're picking up my Spiderman reference), "with great power comes great responsibility." Whether we may like it or not, we have a great power in educating our youth. We help become productive (or not productive) members of society. It's our responsibility to be that person all the time. All that being said, doesn't society know we're human? We have to have some way to vent all of the issues that we deal with on a day to day basis. This next blog that I'll share with you poses the question, "why don't we deal with the bigger issue of our students' behavior?" (http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/116354739.html)
So, the next question is should be we (educators) be able to befriend our students on these same social media sites? I know that many districts (my own included) prohibit such actions. However, I also know of many teachers that use it to make connections with their students. Have you noticed that every year we come back there are more things we must do in the classroom? When do we have time to make those important personal connections? I'm not saying that there aren't people out there that won't take advantage of our young students. I think we should have an edu-facebook that allows our administrators to monitor our online interactions with them.
All in all, do you what you think is right but keep yourself safe and be aware that people are watching you.
Ok, now that I've ranted, let me tell you about what I learned this week. This week we talked about Pintrist, and Symbaloo.
I'm sure you already know all about pintrist, this is a great site that can help you find resources for creating things as well as lesson ideas. If you are less inclined like myself, here is a great video that tells you how to...
The next thing we discussed is Symbaloo. This is a cool site where you can publish what is called a webmix. A webmix is a page that has lots of sites organized on it. It kind of makes me think of diigo (talked about in a previous post), except it's a lot more visual.
I love how you can organize and move the tiles around so easily. What we as educators can do with this is set up a page of resources for our students. The picture above is actually a forensic science resource page. My students will be able to go to my Symbaloo and use these resources. Another great thing about it is that it's uber easy to use. Just go to symbaloo.com to create a page.
Alright everyone, have a great week and I'll see you next time!
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