Social Media & Teaching: Friends or Frenemies?

An intriguing title to the session given by Karin Heuert Galvão, she started off by asking participants if they used social media, which forms and how often and then she went on to talk about netiquette - how to behave online.

First of all she ran through the basics of netiquette, be diplomatic, think before you post, make sure posts are appropriate, NO SHOUTING! don't overuse emoticons or use them in an inappropriate context and the same for textspeak.

Then she went on to talk about Facebook, and whether you should 'friend' students on Facebook, many regular schools do not allow teachers to 'friend' students as part of the school policy, this is a problem which I have faced even when the students tell me and show me that their regular teachers are 'Facebook friends' , to avoid upsetting the sts I explain that it is not my policy, it is the school's policy and I have to follow it if I want to keep working for them. Their response is usually 'That's silly but now I understand why'.

I have now set up a separate web page but I still do not friend people although they are allowed to like my page, hopefully this gets around the problem. I also only teach adults now.

Next Karin  explained how her colleagues in BRELT, use social media as a tool in the teaching process. One teacher tags students so they can read articles she feels may be interesting, another uses groups on Facebook and also Instagram with BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices), still another teacher uses Whatsapp groups and gives each group a different topic or question according to the level of the students. Another teacher also uses Whatsapp to record students speaking so  that they can analyse and comment on each others language. A teacher from Greece says that it is fine to use Pinterest, blogs and similar sites to display students' work as it gives them a real reason for using the language if they know that other  people may see their work, I would also think that it would be a great motivational device too.

She then went on to tell us about some activities that she has for using social media. She talked about (secret) groups for sharing work and announcements and then talked about Facebook as a way of engaging students in discussions ie post the questions on FB.

She uses Twitter to share her achievements but is not a big fan of twitter, I do know of several groups that have regular Tweetmeets and exchange ideas using Twitter - have a look at #ELTCHAT

She also talked about groups on Google+ which allow you to have discussions about various topics.

She then returned to the topic of groups on Facebook to create organisations for communication and then she also went on to talk about ELTCHAT on Twitter.

She talked about getting to know you activities using social media - including instagram - my important things which is an adaptation from an activity she found in Teaching Online by Hockly and Clandfield, Then she talked about an activity called 'My window my world' Photographs are shown that have been taken through the window and students can talk about what they see, where it is ... ( I might steal this for my FB page :)  ) 

Finally she talked about developing your PLN through social media, facebook, twitter, linked in, and many other types of media. She did give us a warning to be careful what you post on social media as it can come back on you if you are not careful.

Thank you Karin for refreshing my knowledge and also for some ideas that I can use too!