I attended the last of several information sessions about the recent Social Media Advisory published by the Ontario College of Teachers and I am very glad that I did. In an earlier post, I discuss this social media use in education and I present some questions to think about.
Consider the following:-
1. Why are some teachers and schools making decisions to use social media tools into their instructional practice without district policy or guidelines?
2. Has the growth in cloud based instructional tools and individual use of social media forced districts to develop related policies?
3. Are teachers putting themselves and their students at risk by using tools and strategies that are not addressed by policy?
4. Finally, is it possible to create a policy about social media when the tools and programs are changing at exponential rates?
I strongly urge you to listen to the following PENCAST. The information presented was done so as ADVICE only. As you listen to the pencast you will notice that the dominant themes about using social media in the classroom was:
* MODEL safe use
* MODEL educational use
* USE good judgment
* LEARN and BE AWARE and ASK QUESTIONS
Page ONE –
Page TWO –
Page THREE –
For more information, more questions and more reflections, visit the following blog, which provides some excellent additional links:
http://markcarbone.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/the-oct-advisory-my-view/
http://www.thecleversheep.com/