Social networking has been a part of my personal and professional life for the last two decades. Back then social networks were in very early stages but even then its power to connect people across locations to share ideas, opinions and generate conversations was apparent. Since moving to New Zealand and changing careers to become an educator, social media continues to be an important aspect of my online presence.
I use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with family and friends, many of whom live overseas. I have over the last 2 years also used Facebook to be connected to the developments in Physics by following the NZQA Physics page as well as some of the pages of local physics competitions. So my focus in terms of using Facebook is purely to stay informed about aspects that relate to the planning of my teaching.
In terms of social networking tools I use the most in my classroom teaching it would be TedEd, TeacherTube, PhysicsTube to be inspired, chllenged, gain ideas and resources usually but I have shared some of the resources I made for my class through TedEd. I have used Skype a few times in the past and plan to utilise it again this year to communicate with experts in fields of physics to provide guest speakers for my classes. Our school used Edmodo as our Learning Management Systems at the initial stages of trialing and since then use Schoology as our school wide LMS. While the school login is to a closed community, there are hundreds of interest groups in the wider Schoology community that provide valuable resources, discussion and inspiration for my teaching.
Melhuish, K. (2013) talks about the opportunities social networking provides members to create, share and curate the knowledge in a shared space where the members' thinking is facilitated and developed by each others' thinking. Sharples, M., de Roock, R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., ... & Weller, M. (2016) also mentions how social media brings learning to life through joining together varying times, spaces, characters and possibilities and how this supports 21st century skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication. All of these aspects are important to our learners as their learning must reflect the environment they live in for the learning to be effective. Most of the social networking tools I use relate to my role as a teacher. The level of social network involvement in my students' learning is quite minimal. While I am part of the "digital immigrant" generation, the current Year 9 group are the first batch of "digital natives" to reach secondary education in New Zealand. For this reason, having a social networking component in my students' learning has become unavoidable.
But there are some challenges. Melhuish, K.(2013) points out that the common ideals on these networks may mean there is a lack of critical voice. While they provide food for thought in terms of ideas, the depth of knowledge to be gained from them are usually superficial so is unlikely to challenge one's existing ideas or practices. And because the network revolves around how one member interacts with others, the communication could be one-dimensional rather than co-constructed. Sharples, M. et al (2016) also raises the issues of these networks providing students with inaccurate information, biased comments and even hostile responses.
Since enrolling for Mindlab, I have increased my presence on social media through the G+ community. I am aware of my activity on these sites being mostly observing and consuming rather than developing or sharing. This is an aspect I plan to work on.
