Making the Classroom :Conceptualizing and Integrating Social Media into the Secondary School Humanities Classroom

Challenges of the Traditional Classroom Reorientation via Social Media Social Media Tools Applications in Classroom

11 September 2009Follow me on: @nkogan

http://nkogan.wordpress.comFort Worth Country DayNate Kogan

Isolation of student work

Teacher-centrism

Students seek all validation from teacher

Obsession with the “right” answer

Teacher responsible for managing and tracking all student work

Propensity for didactic lecturing reinforces “Sage on the Stage” notions.

Insight and access into formative learning see students’ thinking process

• Students can see each other’s learning process and constantly give feedback

• Teacher models constructive criticism and acts as lead-learner

• Discourages plagiarism through transparency

Reduce emphasis on summative product.

• Less focus on “right” answer and grades

• Shift focus to comments and students’ intellectual growth.

Student-centrism

Classroom Interconnectedness

Create accessibility and visibility for:

• Sharing student work digitally

• Students and teacher beyond the

classroom and the school day.

• Other classes and educators across the

country or the world

Blogs

RSS Reader

Diigo

Twitter and Apps

Edmodo

Collaborative Writing

• Venue for Student Writing/Digital Portfolio

• incorporate and embed multiple media

• Promotes inter-textual connections and citation

• Teacher and peers comment easily

• Aggregate and track student work

• Eliminate paper

• Create transparency for students to see:

• each other’s ideas

• each other’s and teacher’s comments

• Ease of tracking research and notes

• Annotate web pages

• Transparent research

• Students linked to each other’s sources

• Students linked to each other’s annotations

• Backchannel for class discussions

• Review tool for quizzes and tests

• Collaborative resource collection

• Utility to enhance class interconnectedness

• Student-to-Student feedback

• Student communication with teacher

• Well-designed course management

• Facebook-like interface

• Easy file-sharing and assignment posting

• Calendar and grading functionality

• Provides insight into formative process

• For both teachers and students

• Ability to track individual contributions

• Ability to track changes and previous versions

• Eliminates email attachment clutter

Students focus on summative product over formative process

• Generally cram for tests; prioritize knowledge of meaning-creation

• Focus on grade, not on comments

Ineffective (and infrequent) peer-editing

• Prioritize social capital above constructive criticism