Social media in the classroom

I must admit that my first reaction to considering Facebook and Twitter in the classroom was not at all positive. First of all, my school blocks Facebook during school hours, presumably so that teachers and students do not waste computer time at school finding out who did what last weekend. My visions of what would happen if Facebook became available on the classroom computers involved the digital version of drawing pictures on desks. I can see students messaging each other rather than staying on task. We already know that students try to  text surreptitiously during class even though they risk losing their phones to the office for a week, so what would happen if we opened social media to them on the school computers?

For online courses, there is not the same concern as for a classroom with computer. I think that the teacher in the traditional classroom combats talking and passing notes while attempting to keep students on-task, and the same behavior would be an issue when using computers in the classroom - only in the form of IM and posting on Facebook, which would be less obvious. Because the LanSchool software was disabled, we have no way of knowing what is on the screen of any given student. It takes less than a second for a student to switch to the screen they are supposed to be working on rather than the one they are really looking at if they are off-task. Other than screen monitoring software, one solution to this would be to rearrange the labs to the configuration used by the school that hosted the technology conference earlier this summer. The computers were arranged with the students facing the walls of the classroom and the screens facing the center, where they would be clearly visible to the teacher at all times.

If, on the other hand, it is a more open idea of using Facebook and Twitter FOR the classroom, I can think of several possibilities. For a class, Facebook could be set up as a closed group and used for many different aspects of managing the class. The most basic function would be sending announcements - what was covered in class, what homework is assigned, etc. The teacher could also post links to helpful websites for further exploration. The messaging could be used to answer questions outside of class time for those who need clarification. Chat could be used between students, or between student and teacher. For student-teacher chat, the teacher could announce a time for "office hours" and be available for chat homework help (or language practice for a foreign language classroom). Students could be required to check the FB page on specific days and respond to a post as a graded assignment. One question I have with this is how to get students to the class page without being Facebook friends with them on a personal side. I have set up a page for French classes in my Facebook account, but have not yet invited any current students to the site. I am still working this out for myself.

In my opinion,Twitter is more limited by its very nature, but it could be useful for posting announcements and assignments for a class. Posting links to other sites could also be done, as could reposting appropriate tweets. For example, I already follow several French news reporting sites on Twitter, and I retweet selected posts about French news, culture, and sports. The intended audience right now is other French teachers, but once school starts, I plan to have students follow my Twitter feed and ask them to respond in class the next day. We could follow just the news about a specific topic, or have a variety of topics up for discussion. Once I have my students following, I plan to try to sort tweets through Hootsuite.

I believe that there are many ways to use social media in an educational setting, but I am still cautious about the way in which they would be used. I think that I need more time to consider the challenges of using social media during class time, but I do think that social media tools could be interesting and helpful for getting information to students and for selected activities.