Thus, many teachers are integrating technology with instruction especially since young adolescents are frequent computer users and find technology very engaging
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Social Media for Middle Level Classrooms - 1 views
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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).
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"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"
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Integration of social media has the engagement factor teachers and students seek while enabling students to gain a variety of academic and social skills
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Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) identify seven types of social media: collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia) blogs and microblogs (e.g., Twitter, Kidblog.org) social news networking sites (e.g., Digg and Leakernet) content communities (e.g., YouTube and DailyMotion) social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) virtual game-worlds (e.g., Minecraft, World of Warcraft) virtual social worlds (e.g., Second Life)
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ncreased student engagement and learning and citizenship education are benefits related to social media use in school.
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For example, middle grades students can discover how technology-assisted writing can foster innovation, global communication and participation, and creative problem solving with a broader communit
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Further, Ramsay purports that technology-assisted writing can nurture student creativity, communication, and problem solving skills while developing digital citizens.
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Additionally, social media helps facilitate differentiation by allowing the needs of creative learners to be met through a cooperative learning environment. Students are better able to balance their individualism with the need for contact with others, allowing new ideas to flourish
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Social media can help adolescents develop and strengthen collaboration skills as they share knowledge, learn with and from others, and are active in the learning process
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Therefore, inclusion of social media in education activities is necessary to help increase equity among students of different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds by increasing access to information and information technology (Darling-Hammond, Zielezinski, & Goldman, 2014; Grinager, 2006).
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Darling-Hammond et al. (2014) recommend the following practices to promote optimal learning opportunities for all students: (a) technology access policies should aim for 1:1 computer access and ensure that speedy internet connections are available, (b) policies and practices should favor technology that promotes high levels of interactivity and engagement and that allows for varying learning choices and opportunities, (c) instructional opportunities should enable students to use technology to create content as well as learn material, and (d) learning environments that provide significant and varied levels of teacher support and opportunities for interactions among students as companions to technology use
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The first issue many educators currently face is equitable access for students and teachers. Further, uncertainty exists on the type and frequency of professional development for middle level educators that addresses ethical and appropriate use of social networking. Additionally, educators must learn how best to help students navigate safely and monitor students in a virtual environment. Lastly, educators must recognize the possibility for distractions and overstimulation that is often linked to certain types of social media and networking activities (Chen & Bryer, 2012).
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Educators and policymakers need to provide the appropriate technology funding and related professional development so students and teachers have the equipment, knowledge, and skills necessary for taking full advantage of what technology can offer.
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It is imperative for educators to have professional development opportunities that enable them to learn developmentally appropriate best practices for preparing students
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AMLE (NMSA, 2010) believes that middle schools must provide adult advocates to middle school students to guide academic and personal development in an inviting, safe, inclusive, and supportive school environment
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Students need to learn how to make great choices about what they share and what are appropriate actions with others, and always review and manage their online reputations in light of others' ability to contribute to that reputation either positively or negatively with a few clicks of the mouse
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Edutopia.com, a website published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation and highly regarded by the educational community, provides thoughtful resources on creating social media guidelines for schools.
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In tandem, teachers must continue to address the issue of plagiarism including how to determine if sources are credible and having clear and consistent plagiarism policies regularly disseminated to students and parents.
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Research suggests that discussions and collaborations are the most common social media classroom strategies (Chen & Bryer, 2012). Frye, Trathen, and Koppenhaver (2010) proclaim that blogs offer students the ability to publish work and comment on others' writing, which increases motivation.
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Research shows that social media can increase student learning and engage students who otherwise may be disinterested in the classroom
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Social media afford[s] the opportunity for all children with online access to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, do real work for real audiences for real purposes, find great teachers and collaborators from around the world, and become great teachers in their own right. (
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The information in this article supports one of the things that my school tech integrationist is trying to get teachers to do with social media. He is asking teachers to do Penpal Schools, which will connect students with other students from around the world. I am going to be having my class do Penpal schools. I also want to try out having my students blog about books we are reading in 7th grade language arts after reading about the benefits of blogging in this article.
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How is your school liking PenPals Schools? I started using it in my classroom but found it to be too time consuming and the questions were a bit overwhelming in the project that we chose. My students were also not getting responses in the way that I expected them to. A lot of them were just getting a lot of "hi" from their Pen pals instead of anything useful.
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Very cool! I really wish I had students at an older age level. Though I can do something like this for 2nd graders it is more difficult with their reading and writing skill levels. Still a pretty cool tool to use for students and teachers alike. Thank you for sharing!
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Social Media is important. When I was in middle school and high school we didn't learn about social media or how to be safe on the internet. It was more of a foot note than a subject in class that we learned about. Blogging was foreign to me until now. I feel like I have missed a lot because of this.
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The 35 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You - Edudemic - Edudemic - 2 views
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This list is a great resource and I believe I could use this in my future classroom. If I am in a classroom with technology readily available I think many of the web 2.0 tools listed in this article could be put to good use! I believe this resource is intended for teachers but will benefit students and teachers alike when these tools are implemented into the classroom. I found this article "The 100 Best Web 2.0 Classroom Tools Chosen By You," http://www.edudemic.com/best-web-tools/. This list was published a year after the article you posted so you might want to check out this list as well! Thank you for your resource!
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This quick article went through 35 web 2.0 tools. I like this list because it has some of the easier things to work with (Prezi, Twitter) to some more advanced things like Diigo and Wikispaces.
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I love lists like this because it is so much easier to rely on someone else's compilation as a starting point rather than gathering tools on your own.
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shared by Katie Upah on 08 Oct 15
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Life in a 21st-Century English Class - 3 views
ww2.kqed.org/...n-a-21st-century-english-class
mindshift techissues 21stcenturyskills english technology socialmedia projectbasedlearning
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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.
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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.
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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.
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One of the most important things we can do is teach our students how to use social media wisely, and how social media can be used for social good.
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Instead, inquiry and technology are a natural part of our English classes. It’s what my students have come to expect and have started to design themselves. Instead, of saying, “hand in your assignments,” I say, “publish your assignments and send me the link.” They think about connecting and sharing their learning in the larger world.
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This teacher describes how she transformed her classroom into a 21st century learning environment for her students.
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I have this saved to read later. I am interested in how she transformed her classroom.
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I found this post very interesting. It is easy to see how PBL may work in a science or math classroom, but I have always wondered how it would look for English. It seems like this teacher has truly grasped PBL, and her students are enjoying the learning process. I think this resource could be utilized by any teacher who instructs about English content, but depending on the age of the learners, the students may not reach full autonomy as those in this article did. I particularly enjoyed one quote from the teacher, "Finally technology is embedded into the structure of all we do... It's never an accessory tacked on at the end." As we have learned about in other EdTech courses, technology needs to truly transform the learning experience. I believe the teacher is doing that in this classroom.
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This Blog is one that I have bookmarked and will coming back to. This teacher's description of her class is how I want to work to make my class to look like. She had her premise but she had been able to create a class based on inquiry, openness and trust. This empowers students to create a social media campaign, create their own curriculum, and at the same time become more advanced in the content. Ms. Barseghian, I'm gushing, but your class sounds inspirational and worth the gushing.
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shared by Morgan McFate on 12 Oct 15
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Educational Leadership:Multiple Measures:Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards - 1 views
www.ascd.org/...h-Interactive-Whiteboards.aspx
Social social media education classroom techissues whiteboards technology smartboard whiteboard
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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.
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The first is the learner-response device—handheld voting devices that students use to enter their responses to questions.
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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
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A quick little website about the some of the pros and cons of using interactive whiteboards in class and how they worked when researched.
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I think that this may be the content of an article, not a website. Also I question how the results they found have changed, considering that this article was published in 2009. Therefore, I am not sure how relevant the content of this article is, because the technology has undoubtedly changed a lot since it was written. This resource is definitely for teacher use; I think the writers are trying to help teachers see how they can utilize interactive whiteboards more effectively in their classrooms. This article left me questioning what the authors were talking about a little bit: under the "What the Research Found" portion of the article, the authors describe three features "inherent in interactive whiteboards" that have increased student achievement. However, the handheld voting devices and projection of graphics and visuals can be done without an interactive whiteboard. It left me unsure about how useful interactive whiteboards are; I think that if I had my choice of technology in the classroom, an interactive whiteboard would not be high on my list.
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shared by Megan Skiles on 12 Oct 15
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300+ Awesome Free Internet Resources You Should Know - 0 views
thenextweb.com/...ssive-list-free-resources-know
technology learning education Google_Apps classroom tools resources
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shared by bethanyluens on 07 Oct 15
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10 of the Most Engaging Uses of Instructional Technology (with Dozens of Resources and ... - 1 views
www.emergingedtech.com/...es-of-instructional-technology
technology instruction education teaching techissues
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The 2014 Gates Foundation report, Teachers Know Best: What Educators Want from Digital Instructional Tools, indicates that teachers want tools “supporting student collaboration and providing interactive experiences”. These types of tools are fun and engaging, and they support 21st century skills like collaboration, communication, and creativity. Learning this compelled me to write the article, “20 Fun Free Tools for Interactive Classroom Collaboration”, which has been in the top 10 most popular posts on the site since I published it in May. We followed that in July with “5 More Cool Tools to Take Classroom Collaboration to a New Level”, another popular post. So there you have over two dozen fun free interactive collaboration tools to consider using in your classes this year!
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