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"This post is part of C.M Rubin's monthly series in the Huffington post: The Global Search for Education: Our Top 12 Global Teacher Blogs. This month we are answering the following prompt: Can Social Media Have a Role to Play in Managing a Successful Classroom? As in previous posts in the series, I am examining the prompt from a semantic point of view and ask myself immediately: What do we consider " managing a successful classroom" (and even what does it successful mean)? I also stumbled immediately over the word "CAN" and cringed when I wondered if it could say "Should" or "Must"? Semantics aside and out with an easy and short response: YES, social media can play a role in a successful classroom."

"Heidi Hayes Jacobs and I have been working on a curated Global Education site that will bring resources to educators to address global awareness, skills, literacies and competencies in their schools and classroom. The site hopes to facilitate connections between educators and established global projects and act as a clearinghouse for web 2.0 tools, links and books that facilitate, support and encourage global teaching and learning."

"I am pleased to share with you an opportunity for Middle School Students to collaborate on a global perspectives project. Mark Engstrom, the Assistant Principal and Middle School Geography teacher at my new school in São Paulo, Brazil, and his collaboration partner, Laurie Clement, a MS teacher in Windsor, Canada, have put together various projects to connect middle school geography students from around the world and to facilitate collaboration among them. This past school year, our students in Brazil worked together with students from Canada, USA and Sweden. They are expanding this opportunity to more schools and countries."

"There can never be enough examples from the classroom to share. The benefits are many, from creating a ripple effect of digitally documenting and sharing to a glimpse in someone else's classroom by having the opportunity to be a fly on the wall via a video clip. I have shared the Excitement of Learning that can unfold with a Mystery Skype call before. The following video clip is from David Jorgensen's 8th grade Humanities class (São Paulo, Brazil), recorded during their first Mystery Skype with a class from rural Iowa, USA."

"Tutorial Designer" is one of the six roles, Alan November lists in his Digital Learning Farm that empower student learners and describes in his book 'Who owns the Learning?. Take a look at the examples below of students: sharing what they have learned in class sharing beyond their classroom and their parents sharing with a global audience in mind."

"Nowadays, public speakers, consultant or conference workshop leaders are not the only ones "presenting" to an audience. Kindergarten students are becoming presenters, as they are showing their work to a global audience on platforms such as their classroom blog or even their own blogfolios. In the age of youTube, Flickr and Slideshare, anyone can be a presenter with a click of an upload button."

"There is more to blogging with your students than simply creating a blog and starting to copy and paste work, that traditionally was done on a paper journal or worksheet in the classroom, into that digital space. Blogging is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience in mind, observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as one documents, organizes and makes one's learning and thinking visible and searchable."

"Getting an entire school on board with a digital communication platform aka classroom blog is a PROCESS. A (baby) step by (baby) step process… As the interaction between teachers, school, students, parent and global community increases, so does the need for other "little" pieces of 21st century literacies. "

"In a unit on Transportation, our Kindergarteners read a large picture book "On the Move!" by Donna Latham Students got so interested into learning about different ways people around the globe got around. They were even ready to take a trip to Venice, Italy to ride in a Vaporetto. Since our 5 & 6 year olds have gotten pretty good at using PicCollage on the iPads, their teacher Arlene Yegelwel, wanted to personalize another collaborative classroom eBook. She took the time to find over 20 public domain images of transportation methods they had discussed in class on Wikimedia Commons and sent them in one email to each iPad."

"What Do You Have to Lose? was a blog post I wrote 4 years ago… It is a new idea for many classroom teachers/students to move from writing, reading and "doing" work, not only for themselves, supervisors/parents or for a monetary compensation/grade, to share their work openly and freely with others. The idea of putting oneself "out there on the internet" (on a larger scale than the teacher lounge) and publicly "brag" about successes, admit failures, ask for help or document one's learning and teaching process, feels unnatural and even scares many of them. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, a lot has changed in terms of technology… It has been 4 years and my belief in sharing to amplify teaching and learning has grown stronger, even when the work I share gets taken, plagiarized and used for profit by others. I am continuing to make the benefits of documenting (for reflection, metacognition and connection purposes) visible, but the documentation can not be the end all. The next step must be sharing and disseminating that documentation. It is about sharing conversations, resources, model lessons, student work, reflections, innovative ideas, action research, etc. Sharing in service of benefiting the educational community and advancing eduction. Sharing in order to be part of a network that supports each other and and pushes thinking forward. Without individual parts, there is no network. The more parts, the larger and stronger the potential network. In the last few weeks, there have been many examples at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, that show the power of sharing and the ripple effect it created: Teaching others you will never meet Authentic audience Feedback Personal Branding Remix & Added Value Building a Personal Learning Network"