The Social Media Classroom

The term “social media” includes all those forms of digital technology that allow as to communicate and share information or “content” with others using the internet. Social media include everything from blogs, wikis, and podcast to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, websites and apps. Social media are ideal for educators because they are nimble, flexible, easy to use and often very powerful: they focus on doing one thing only and on doing that thing well. Moreover, with social media students can participate easily in the creation of content, websites and their own learning spaces, meaning that these tools can be student– and class-focused rather than teacher-driven. If used correctly, social media can have many benefits in the educational setting, depending on the task and the type of media employed.

With the rapid advancement of technology, it is challenging for teachers and educators to ensure that learning design approaches remain current. Teachers are expected to be up-todate on -and be proficient in the newest technology in the classroom. While using various technologies to supplement learning is attractive, the use of these tools is not always intuitive. It can be difficult for instructors to maintain best practices of pedagogy while continuously learning and relearning how to incorporate emerging technologies. One group of technologies that is increasingly of interest to instructors is social media. Social media are webbased platforms that facilitate collaboration, interaction, and ex-change of user- generated content. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and various wiki- style sites are integrated firmly into the personal lives of most students, allowing faculty the opportunity to customize course material to facilitate and accomplish learning expectations and goals. This course is designed to help teachers and educators understand how to incorporate very popular tech trends – social media, blogging, web-based tools – into the classroom. Through a series of theoretical lectures and practical workshops teachers are expected to get familiar with social media and become able of using them in the classroom for education purposes. 

• Understand the concept digital pedagogy and the need for developing a digital pedagogy of your own.
• Know some of the imperatives that drive change in educational practices.
• Explore new ways in teaching through social media and web tools.
• Provide school education staff with practical ideas on how they can incorporate technology into their existing teaching programs.
• Familiarize school education staff with using social media during classroom activities.
• Enable school education staff to become confident and competent enough to create a collaborative, interactive classroom experience for their students through the use of the ICT and social media.
• Use different Social Media in the classroom: managing groups, interacting, communicating, sharing materials.
• Make a search easier, create playlist about different topics, share and embed videos and playlists.
• Propose tasks and exercises through Social Media.