But for different reasons of course!
On a more serious note, in the last three years, I have created a virtual life of myself, the teacher. A life that began for the purpose of connecting with old friends, making new ones and stalking family on Facebook has grown to be a part of my profession live as well. I have begun using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, avatars and timelines regularly in courses that I teach. And the experience has only added to my own growth as an educator.
The most obvious benefit is becoming familiar with social media tools that are widely used by businesses in the UAE/world today. As an educator, I believe that I need to embrace these tools to ensure that students can be a part of such emerging trends. Mostly I have used these to help students understand advertising and viral marketing, technology based solution for businesses, use of social media in customer service, use of collaborative tools etc. While the opportunity to get students to appreciate their application in the classroom has lots of potential, there are a few mundane challenges and questions that come up.
First of all there is the learning curve accompanying the learning of a new skill, which is probably the easiest of challenges. There is the always an element of doubt about how students would take to such learning. Is it culturally acceptable to use these in the class room? How do you deal with situations when the wrong ad or the wrong image or inappropriate language surfaces on a page? How does one monitor participation in a collaborative learning activity. How can you ensure that the content is learnt just as much as the tool? What is a good rubric to assess such learning? Where are the best practices?
I could go on... What is necessary is a community of practice which would lighten the load of one teacher’s learning and create a body of resources through collaborative efforts.
After all as educators if we do not take the initiative or have the curiosity and imagination to innovate how can we impart these skills to our students?
Yes Sharmila, it's much better to have a network to work with, share ideas and come to an agreement as to what works best with your particular population of students. Further, here at HCT, it's beneficial if you can work with colleagues from other colleges as well, to share the work load and get input from others also.
ReplyDeleteThanks Nancy. Do we have such a forum at HCT for teachers?
ReplyDelete'Community of practice' as you mentioned is vital in using these technologies in class. How much do we really want to know and where does one draw the line it terms of having access to personal details of students for eg: in a Facebook account!I wonder, how do you tackle this it must be a challenge!
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