Module 9

Social networking has been an area that we as teachers or maybe me as a teacher have been very wary of bringing into the classroom and that is probably what this course is aiming to overcome.

When using social media we do need to look at two areas listed in the module
1. Is it more appropriate for social/ personal use or professional?
2. What applications does it have for school /classroom?

Second Life
As a primary school teacher when I first saw the video of what second life is I totally had answered no for question 2 especially based on the first video that had a young woman shooting someone and a few seconds later we had a couple building a house and making out. The thoughts of what implications this would have was too scarey for words.

However watching the two videos on Exploring the possibilities and Educational uses of Second life opened my eyes to quite a few possibilities for teachers use of this media .

Facebook 
Like so many of us I have a facebook account but use it to communicate with just family and friends. It amazes me just how many parents will have created Facebook accounts for their children just so they can play farmville or candy crush. It also amazes me how quickly people will add friends just so their list of 728 friends looks impressive. People use facebook without being aware of the settings. I commented to a friend recently about a photo of her that someone had posted and she was not aware that all her friends would be able to see it.

As educators we need to make students aware of the problems that can arise by using this network.  Currently we are doing a lot of work within our school on cyber bullying and cybersafety and one of the areas we discuss is facebook and what students need to be aware of

Twitter
I am still fence sitting on twitter. I can see some great opportunities but I still have concerns over its uses as said in earlier module. Guess I just need to keep looking and learning

Linkedin
While this network system would be great to communicate with other like teachers in attempting to set up an account it needs you to have the contacts so unless I have done something wrong I do not see this being much different to Google+