Social Media for Educators

ORHow to work and live in a media revolution

By Susan Naples - July 2010

The most useful tool

As an educator, the concept of PLNs or Personal Learning Networks is revolutionary both for myself as well as my students.. Through PLNs I have begun to make connections with other social media users as well as other social studies teachers.

I became a member of: The Educator’s PLN http://edupln.ning.com/profile/SusanNaples and Classroom 2.0 http://www.classroom20.com/profile/SusanNaples

For my students I created a Ning http://naplesushistory.ning.com/ that has quickly become a networking tool for the classroom this summer. While I use moodle already, the Ning has even more capability to network students as well as to engage them in learning.

Success!!Even more important to me was being able to create my

own website for my cake business. Using godaddygo.com as the host, I was able to take my

photos and information and turn them into something to help my business grow.

Please visit www.susanscakesonline.com

Challenges

I am concerned about the changes that are about to occur to Ning that may impact the free nature of it. I have applied to Pearson for a free account for at least three years. However, spending some time to create a Ning, I do not want to lose the tool.

Creating a cake business website that would convey some motion and feeling in the presentation of the cake photos was my biggest challenge. Endless hours were spent in the process of creating a Keynote slideshow along with website pages with information.

What I love most

2.0 3 2000-2009 2 21stcenturylearning 1 21stcenturyskills 3 animation 1 APA, 1 atomic 1 avatar 1 biography 2 Blog 1 blogs 1 bomb 1 Brochure 1 Civil 1 civil_rights 2 classroom 1 collaboration 2 Current 1 curse 1 database 1 Decade 2 digitalstorytelling 1 Disorders 1 edtech 2 education 7 Education,PLN, 2 educational 1 educators 2 Events 1 Games 1 Graphic 1 guide 1 Gulf 1 history 8 History 5 History, 1 imigration 1 Kennedy 2 Lab 1 Leaders 1 Mag 1 Making 1 Malcolm 1 Map 1 Memory, 1 microblogging 1 Online 2 Organizer 1 PLN 1 Powerpoints 1 problem 1 Projects 2 psych 4 Psych 1 Psychology 3 Psychology, 1 Ramona 1 research 1 resources 7 Rights 1 s. 1 Scholastic 1 Sharing 1 Sleep 2 social_studies 1 Solving 1 Soviet 1 Spanking 1 Technology, 1 Ted 1 u. 1 us 4 US 2 War 1 Watergate 1 web2.0 3 websites 1

The tags on Delicious make important resources easy to find.

Challenges

Another challenge for me is finding meaningful connections on Twitter. I find the 140 character limit to be restrictive. I also find that my own private nature makes me feel less comfortable with some of kinds of tweets that do occur. My twitter address is https://twitter.com/naplessusan.

Finally I am somewhat overwhelmed with how much there is to discover and digest in using social media. Through time and experience I will probably become more comfortable with the opportunities that now exist.

Delicious

I think this site is one of the best kept secrets in the technology world. While I agree that it isn’t flashy, there are other programs that do offer more fanfare, if that’s what you are looking for. In the meantime, I think students need to be encouraged to use the bookmark feature in their classes.

Please share with me at http://delicious.com/naplessusan

The Moodle Course

I feel that I gained the most from these on-line courses because I was comfortable with using Moodle. At the same time, I learned more about other social media sources that exist. The more comfortable I feel when learning a new technology, the quicker I am able to move into actually using the new media.

Final Thoughts

I do hope that more of my colleagues will begin to share their teaching methods through the use of the social media. Yet even if they don’t, I now know that it’s a big world out there that is made closer using social media.

At the very least, the next time the social studies department needs to communicate, I hope that we use one of the media forms. There is a revolution in the way we communicate and it certainly does become important to know how to use the media in order to be better prepared to function in this new world.