martedì 1 dicembre 2015

Social Media & Teaching

MM7- Webinar held on 29  November 2015


Presenter: Karin Heuert Galvão

The webinar was the 39th on the list of webinars presented in the list of webinars of the MOODLE MOOC 7 which was organized by Nellie Deutsch for this important session about Moodle.
I watched the webinar live. It was last Sunday and I was at home so I could watch this webinar and more webinars on the same day. I could get some nice ideas and learn from other teachers who shared their  ideas with us.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER  OF  THIS WEBINAR

The presenter :Karin Heuert Galvão is an  EFL TEACHER. She is a Director at i-Study Interactive Learning  in São Paulo (Brazil). Karin discussed the topic  “Social Media & Teaching: Friends or Frenemies?” 
Social Media are getting more and more important and FB is now part of the life of people and  adults.It can be used also in teaching and she showed us some activities she did online in ther groups. 
The webinar can be accessed online as it was recorded and uploaded on the YouTube:   

My reflections

The presenter asked us about our life and what social media we followed, most of the attendees said that they were on FB. I am not on it but I use  Twitter and Linkedin and Google+ so in some way I also know about the importance of  the new tools and I  am aware of the benefits we can have. But we do not share FB or other media with our students in my school, most of my students have FB but it is only used for private chatting.
In the webinar I found some teachers like me who were doing the MOOC online and we  just shared our ideas about their use in education both for teachers and for students.

What was really interesting in this WEBINAR were the ideas the presenter expressed by focussing on the importance  social media have in our students' life and how we should make students aware of the importance and the risks they can have.
Here are some conventions which should be  followed when posting and  communicating online:
  • when posting your opinion be  respectful
  •  think before writing and when replying to posts
  • use emoticons to promote a friendly atmosphere
  • when posting  your opinions  avoid  capital letters- they can be a sign of  a person who shouts 
  • be aware of overusing  abbreviations  
An important discussion was about  FB and the issue of working with groups in FB.
If we have closed groups,FB can work well but we must also teach our students how to work on social networks.
For teachers  FB  can be a  great tool:
  • it can be used to communicate with students
  • it can be used as a tool as announcements
  • it can be a tool that can engage our students in discussions
I am aware that FB can be a great tool, but I prefer working online with other tools. For example, I use blogs and Google doc for sharing materials and ideas with my students.
What the presenter  underlined in the session was the importance of using social media  to learn  from and share ideas with other teachers. This is a reality that I am now part of.
FB, Twitter and other  social media are a great source of information. I agree that I could not work now if I  did not have connections and I did not learn from others.
I am on Twitter and use most of the services that are provided: there are communities of ELT/ESL  teachers online and I am learning and following a lot of people. 
Social Media have now replaced other ways of learning: for example she shared the hashtag for  ELT- which is really important for me too:   https://twitter.com/hashtag/ELTchat?src=hash
This is a thriving  community that works online every Wednesday.
Twitter is a  community of educators also  and I like it. I also follow some FB pages of important publishers or the British Council, but I have not applied to become a member of them.

The debate online was engaging and teachers shared their opinions, I liked the way we all interacted and also think that we are growing and the teachers are building new communities and sharing great and inspiring ideas about the best practices.

I liked the level of engagement of the presenter for what she was presenting us, she is a keen lover of what she does when teaching. The final slides were great and I am sharing them with you. 
Technology can help us work better






But  we must be aware of what we are doing 
online  so this advice for students should be part of our  teaching and we should teach them digital skills and more skills:



 
For more ideas about social media in education  we could also check this link:


What I am going to do next

I am thinking about the way  I could work online with my students by opening a  TWITTER account for my classes and use hashtags for classes, the private account will be used for my professional development.
I will try to search more communities online to share ideas about  teaching and learning languages and using modern web 2.0 tools.
Thanks to the speaker for the nice ideas and the love for teaching she shared with us!!





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