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12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now Tweet or post status updates as a class. Teacher Karen Lirenman lets students propose nuggets of learning that are posted for parents to read. Write blog posts about what students are learning. Teacher Kevin Jarrett blogs reflections about his Elementary STEM lab for parents to read each week. Let your students write for the world. Linda Yollis' students reflect about learning and classroom happenings. Connect to other classrooms through social media. Joli Barker is fearlessly connecting her classroom through a variety of media. Use Facebook to get feedback for your students' online science fair projects. Teacher Jamie Ewing is doing this now, as he shared recently. Use YouTube for your students to host a show or a podcast. Don Wettrick's students hosted the Focus Show online and now share their work on a podcast. Create Twitter accounts for a special interest projects. My student Morgan spent two years testing and researching the best apps for kids with autism (with the help of three "recruits"), and her work just won her an NCWIT Award for the State of Georgia.

Ask questions to engage your students in authentic learning. Tom Barrett did this when his class studied probability by asking about the weather in various locations. Communicate with other classrooms. The Global Read Aloud, Global Classroom Project and Physics of the Future are three examples of how teachers use social media to connect their students as they collaborate and communicate. Create projects with other teachers. (Full disclosure: I co-created Physics of the Future with Aaron Maurer, a fellow educator I first met on Twitter.) Share your learning with the world. My students are creating an Encyclopedia of Learning Games with Dr. Lee Graham's grad students at the University of Alaska Southeast. The educators are testing the games, and the students are testing them, too. Further a cause that you care about. Mrs. Stadler's classes are working to save the rhinos in South Africa, and Angela Maiers has thousands of kids choosing to matter.

12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now

The primary purpose of education is to enable students to make a living as adults; without this capability, everything else falls away. Yet we still teach within a basic framework established in the 19th century. In today’s education environment, we seem to be slipping back from the future into the 19th century’s contextual emphasis on reading, writing, and math. The consequences could be dire, even propelling us back to a two-tiered education system: just reading, writing, and math for the disadvantaged in underresourced schools, alongside a richer 21st-century curriculum for the country’s productive employees and future decisionmakers.

• Generative Computation The ability to create a limitless variety of “expressions” from a generative catalyst of modest content. Think Beethoven’s four-note theme, which he spun into the Fifth Symphony. • Promiscuous Combination of Ideas Mingling of different domains of knowledge, thereby creating new products, relationships, techniques, and technologies. Think of a recipe that combines the chemistry of ingredients with knowledge of temperature and time, along with taste, feel, and smell. • Mental Symbols Encoding sensory experiences, both real and imagined, into complex systems of communication. Think metaphor or analogy. • Abstract Thought The ability to imagine what isn’t yet.

Students should have the opportunity to not only learn from others but also share their learning with others as well.

I actually cared what I was learning about.

time to connect and reflect on what is being learned

Engagement:

Social Learning: 

Use time outside of class better, so you can use in-class time better

Thus, many teachers are integrating technology with instruction especially since young adolescents are frequent computer users and find technology very engaging

teachers and students feel strongly that technology is an essential learning component because it assists with engagement, makes education relevant to students' lives, and serves as an inspiring force (p. 31).

"Additionally, learning experiences are greatly enhanced when all students have the technology to access rich content, communicate with others, write for authentic audiences, and collaborate with other learners next door or across the globe"

Schools are busy places, and parents need a trusted place to find the right information.

It must be mobile friendly.

It must be easy to update, preferably automatically.

I recently asked thousands of educatorswhat “21st-century skills and tools” means to them, and how one might integrate such technologies and skills into today’s classrooms

A teacher possessing 21st-century skills fearlessly seeks out methods and tools—technology—that will enhance not only their students’ learning—but their own personal growth as well.

utilize technology to deliver curriculum content in a manner that is both rigorous and relevant

every teacher already has the tools to differentiate in powerful ways for all learners

The core of differentiation is a relationship between teachers and students. The teacher's responsibility is connecting content, process, and product. Students respond to learning based on readiness, interests, and learning profile.

Content is comprised of the knowledge, concepts, and skills that students need to learn based on the curriculum.

However, I also agree that social media pervades all aspects of modern society, and it has become an imperative for us as educators -- and parents -- to model appropriate digital citizenship to even our youngest learners. Do I really believe that toddlers should have Twitter handles? Not really. But we do need to introduce children to the virtual, social world around them in appropriate and meaningful ways? Definitely.

Students already have enough screen time. Students need to be able to communicate in person. Students don't need to know about social media at this point -- it isn't age appropriate.

Extend the Classroom

To begin with, I don’t lecture. My students don’t take notes, at least not in the traditional sense, and we don’t read a novel and simply answer the questions.

It also means my students don’t acquire knowledge just for the sake of acquiring it. They need to do something with it — that’s where “project-based” comes into play.

Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.

“Edmodo allows students to turn projects in digitally, it helps keep kids accountable, and it allows me to provide feedback and annotated notes,” McDonald says.

Gould Burgess says Google Forms is one of the most useful applications she relies on. Using it, she can administer a quiz that her students complete electronically, and Google Forms immediately compiles all the data and organizes it into an easy-to-read chart showing how well the class did.

Celly, a group messaging service for cell phones, is ideal for educators who want to communicate instantly with students via phone but don’t want to share their personal numbers

For those who may still be unfamiliar with the technology, an interactive whiteboard is a large display that connects to a computer and a projector. The projector projects the computer's desktop onto the board's surface, where users control the computer with a pen, finger, or other device.

The first is the learner-response device—handheld voting devices that students use to enter their responses to questions.

A third feature is the interactive whiteboard reinforcer—applications that teachers can use to signal that an answer is correct or to present information in an unusual context