Social Media in the Classroom

This week I spent some time doing research on ways that social media is being used for teaching and learning in classrooms.  I originally started my search focusing only on middle school grades, but quickly found that I needed to broaden my search if I wanted to find specific examples shared by teachers of what is working in their classrooms.  I found quite a few exciting examples of projects that I feel I could actually use in my sixth grade classroom, even though their sources ranged from fourth grade through college classes.  Social media is social media, and good teaching is good teaching, so many of the ways it's being used are easily applied to a wide range of grade levels.  I am very open minded about allowing students to use cell phones and social media in school and have been searching for ways to integrate it with learning in the classroom, so I curated a collection of social media based projects that inspired me, which you can find here: http://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-for-teaching-learning

My favorite project that I plan to start at the beginning of the upcoming school year is one in which a different student each day is designated as the "daily reporter" and uses the classroom iPad to take photos of students engaged in learning throughout the day.  The reporter than creates a photo collage, writes a caption to summarize the day, and posts it to Instagram using the class and district hashtags.  Giving students power and agency to share their learning with the world is a powerful way to use social media positively.  I also love the idea of having students tweet out main ideas and points from lectures and lessons and using a site like Twitterfall to project them onto the SmartBoard at the front of the room throughout the lesson.  Another favorite project involved students using Snapchat to take photos of real life examples of vocabulary words for Spanish class, captioning them in Spanish, and creating a Snapchat story for reviewing and studying.  I love this modern twist on vocabulary flashcards.
All of the projects I shared have some key characteristics - students feel engaged and enthusiastic about the assignment because using social media makes it relevant and meaningful for them, students are sharing their thoughts or work with a broader (often global) audience which often makes them more mindful about the quality of the work they're sharing, and students feel empowered when they're allowed to use the tools of their choosing to demonstrate their learning. The educational implications of social media are becoming more and more accepted and it's great that these innovative teachers are willing to share their ideas to help others find ways to use social media in productive ways in their own classrooms.