Using Social Media in the Classroom: A Best Practice Guide by
'A book for every teacher's bookshelf. This book gives a comprehensive overview of the tools and apps that can be used to help turn a mediocre teaching session into an outstanding one.' - Cheryl Hine, Leeds City College 'Megan Poore's updated text is needed more than ever, as social media becomes increasingly integrated in many aspects of education. I would recommend it to all practising teachers and trainee teachers, whatever their subject.' - Sue Howarth, University of Worcester This is an essential guide to using social media to enhance teaching and learning in schools. It combines practical information on using all forms of social media for educational purposes and provides indispensable advice on how to tackle issues arising from social media use in the classroom. Key topics include: using blogs, wikis, social media networks and podcasting, digital literacy and new modes of learning, digital participation, cyberbullying and understanding risk online. This second edition includes: · Reflective tasks in each chapter inviting you to critically consider important aspects of using social media in education. · Expanded coverage of game-based learning and mobile learning. · New examples tailored for use in primary and secondary schools. · A website including additional resources and handouts can be found at study.sagepub.com/poore2e. This is essential reading for anyone training to teach in schools, and experienced teachers seeking to improve their understanding of using social media for teaching in informed and appropriate ways.
The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning by
One of the first champions of the positive effects of gaming reveals the dark side of today's digital and social media Today's schools are eager to use the latest technology in the classroom, but rather than improving learning, the new e-media can just as easily narrow students' horizons. Education innovator James Paul Gee first documented the educational benefits of gaming a decade ago in his classicWhat Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Now, with digital and social media at the center of modern life, he issues an important warning that groundbreaking new technologies, far from revolutionizing schooling, can stymy the next generation's ability to resolve deep global challenges. The solution-and perhaps our children's future-lies in what Gee calls synchronized intelligence, a way of organizing people and their digital tools to solve problems, produce knowledge, and allow people to count and contribute. Gee explores important strategies and tools for today's parents, educators, and policy makers, including virtual worlds, artificial tutors, and ways to create collective intelligence where everyday people can solve hard problems. By harnessing the power of human creativity with interactional and technological sophistication we can finally overcome the limitations of today's failing educational system and solve problems in our high-risk global world.The Anti-Education Era is a powerful and important call to reshape digital learning, engage children in a meaningful educational experience, and bridge inequality.
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by
Explore the wide world of new, easy-to-use Web publishing and information gathering tools! Written for educators of all disciplines, this third edition of a bestseller provides real examples from K-12 teachers around the world on how Web tools allow students to learn more, create more, and communicate better. Updated with materials on Web publishing and information literacy, this resource opens up a new toolbox for both novice and tech-savvy educators, with how-to steps for teaching with: Weblogsnbsp; Wikis Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds and aggregators Social bookmarkingnbsp; Online photo galleriesnbsp; Facebook, MySpace, and Twitternbsp;
Using Apps for Learning Across the Curriculum by
How can apps be used to foster learning with literacy across the curriculum? This book offers both a theoretical framework for considering app affordances and practical ways to use apps to build students' disciplinary literacies and to foster a wide range of literacy practices. Using Apps for Learning Across the Curriculum presents a wide range of different apps and also assesses their value features methods for and apps related to planning instruction and assessing student learning identifies favorite apps whose affordances are most likely to foster certain disciplinary literacies includes resources and apps for professional development provides examples of student learning in the classroom A website (www.usingipads.pbworks.com) with resources for teaching and further reading for each chapter, a link to a blog for continuing conversations about topics in the book (appsforlearningliteracies.com), and more enhance the usefulness of the book.
Interactive Open Educational Resources: A Guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What's Out There to Transform College Teaching by
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014! Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), this one-of-a-kind book demonstrates the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive open educational resources (OERs) into the teaching and learning process. The author examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor s curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution s learning management system.
Action learning aims to organize groups or sets of peers around the experience of solving “real” problems through collaboration, critical thinking, and reflection. Rather than emphasizing traditional, “programmed instruction” (P), Action Learning underscores the importance of “questioning insight” (Q) and teamwork as key strategies for problem solving. By putting students in real, problem-solving something, and encouraging them to seek new solutions to familiar problems, action learning hopes to
With the release of its user-friendly tutorial, Adventure, Wikipedia has created new opportunities for action learning across disciplines. Divided into seven Missions that teach users how to edit, create, format, and publish contributions, the Wikipedia Adventure provides teachers and students with the research, writing, formatting, and curating skills they need to contribute to a real knowledge community. Using a badge system to mark progress and mastery, Adventure awards badges for such skills as communication, collaboration, research, neutrality, and civility. Put another way, Wikipedia projects teach students transferable, 21st-century skills and important Student Learning Outcomes while simultaneously empowering them as authors and members of global knowledge community with the ability to reach millions of readers.
See the attached PowerPoint at the bottom of this page for more on learning outcomes and student data as it relates to my English 102 class’s Wikipedia article on Gus Nall.
Projects:
Edit a Wikipedia page on an important class concept, process, or historical figure like mitosis, hegemony, entrepreneurship, vectors, cognitive development, Harriet Tubman or Marie Curie, using course materials and/or new research. (Editing includes adding, improving, moving, and deleting.)
Create a new Wikipedia article on a class-related topic using the Requested Articles link or finding a notable topic for which there is no article. (This is far more difficult than it might seem.)
Evaluate the accuracy and thoroughness of a Wikipedia article on an important class concept, process or historical figure, using course materials and new research.
Interact with experienced Wikipedia users from across the globe in the Teahouse. Ask questions about Wikipedia articles and policies, or get help with your project from experienced peer-editors.
Strategies:
Incorporate the Adventure Missions into your course design. Grade students on completing Missions, which they can show by uploading screenshots of their badges into Canvas.
Create teams or “sets.” For team or class projects, create groups that include at least two students in the following roles: Researchers to find and cite resources, Writers to summarize the research for publication on Wikipedia, and Formatters to add the writing, references, and images to Wikipedia. For class projects, it helps to appoint or elect team leaders responsible for quality control and communication.
Incorporate students into the decision-making process. Hold class meetings designed around solving problems such as choosing a topic, finding new avenues of research, organizing ideas into categories, adding images that support and illustrate the writing, and creating references. Hold class votes, and document your decision making process for reflection.
Use the Wikipedia Sandbox included in user profiles to create a rough draft of your Wikipedia contributions before submitting them for publication to the Wikipedia community.
Ask for help from experienced peer-editors in the Teahouse.